


Once Upon a Blue Moon

by Perfectly Logical Explanation (GrimRevolution)



Series: Blue Moon [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Murder Mystery, Once upon a blue moon au, Teenage Dipper Pines, Teenage Mabel Pines, Werewolf Dipper Pines, Witch Mabel Pines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-18 03:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4690958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimRevolution/pseuds/Perfectly%20Logical%20Explanation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitten by a werewolf at age twelve, Dipper Pines runs away to find a way to control the beast. Five years later he returns to Gravity Falls, but between something killing the residents, repairing the relationship he used to have with his sister, and the guy now living in the basement, nothing is never as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Dipper Pines woke up to bones one July morning.

The sun was still rising, spilling shades of orange, pink, and gold upon the ground and surrounding trees. It was hot against his skin—not scorching, though. The kind of heat that came from the early hours and a high concentration of light. And there were bones. A ribcage torn apart and spread across some wildflowers, a femur that had been snapped in half, fibula and tibia, missing phalanges (both the toe and finger kind) and a skull that glared at him accusingly, upside down and against a rock. They weren’t old bones either—they gleamed as if something had stripped them of everything that used to block the sun.

Skin, muscles, ligaments. Everything was gone.

To be honest, bones weren’t the strangest thing he had woken up to after living some couple of weeks at the Mystery Shack. Stan enjoyed scaring the crap out of him and Mabel, and Dipper just happened to be the easier target. That ugly mermaid thing showing up in his bed, _that_ was a surprise.

He wasn’t in the shack, though, nor anywhere near it (as far as he could tell) and his socks and shoes were missing, red shirt in tatters, and shorts held together by the elastic around the waist. The bottom of his feet ached, cut up and bruised from walking barefoot through the forest.

And there was blood. Blood across his hands all the way up his arms, cracking from where it had dried on his skin, making the sensitive areas itch; between his fingers, at his elbows, underneath his chin. Dipper groaned and sat up, leaning slightly to the side when the ribs on the left side of his body ached, like someone had punched him repeatedly in the side. Feeling along the bones, the boy noted that nothing seemed broken (but what did he know? He was _twelve_ ).

Everything wobbled as he tried to stand up. The earth was already spinning too fast, and  twisted beneath his feet, just about throwing him back on his face. Taking a few deep breaths, Dipper steadied himself, keeping his eyes focused on a branch and trying to ignore the way the very sky seemed to tilt.

The bones were still there. He was making an effort not to look at them.

Once the earth wasn’t set to toss him around like a ragdoll, Dipper wandered (stumbled, floundered, almost tripped over air) through the trees, wincing whenever his feet caught on some twig or rock. “Hello?” He called, cupping his hands around his mouth. Even if just the gnomes answered he might be able to find his way back to the shack from their home in the trees.

Nothing. Just his own voice echoing back from the cliffs. Clouds were forming above the tops of the conifers as he started forward again, picking his way through the trunks to look for any familiar tree, bush, or rock. A breeze easily made its way through his tattered clothes, making him shiver.

After a couple of minutes, Dipper stopped. _Everything_ looked the same, nothing looked familiar, and he was starting to get a headache from the sunlight. Fighting the urge to cry, he violently kicked out at a twig, sending it crashing through the underbrush.

It was okay, he was okay. Leaning against a tree, the twelve year old took a deep breath to calm that inner anxiety monster that was clawing up his throat. The Manataurs taught him how to find his way in the woods, he’ll be fine. Besides the occasional monster and animal there wasn’t anything to be afraid of, right? Maybe he would stumble upon a herd of unicorns to bring Mabel back to later.

 _Just keep lying to yourself_ , a voice spoke in the back of his mind but he told it to shut up and that seemed to work for the moment. Calmer, Dipper noted the position of the sun ( _always rises in the east_ ) and headed in the opposite direction leaving the scattered remains of a human skeleton behind. Smoke was starting to rise a bit to his left and the valley that hosted Gravity Falls wasn’t so large that you could get lost for days. Either you’d run into the road, the cliffs, the lake, or the town.

It only took him a couple of hours to find the road leading up to the Mystery Shack and he managed to sneak inside without anyone (especially Stan or Mabel) seeing him. Grabbing a stack of clothing, Dipper escaped to the bathroom, locked the door, and got his first, good look at himself.

Dried blood was cracking like some macabre Halloween paint on his face. It covered his neck, chin, and the sides of his mouth as if—as if he had been _eating_ something. Turning away from his reflection, the twelve year old started up the shower and shed his ruined clothing, tossing everything into the waste basket with plans to take it all downstairs (to burn? To throw away?) so no one else could stumble upon it.

A knock on the door almost made him slip on the tub floor and crack his head open against the wall.

“Dipper?” Mabel called through the door. “Is that you in there?”

“Y-yeah!” His voice cracked from disuse and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s me!”

There was some giggling before she patted the door as if it was an attachment to him. “Okay, bro bro! Stan made pancakes. Bacon, and eggs for when you’re done!”

It was just... _so_ normal. “Okay!” Dipper called back. “I’ll be down in a bit!” He heard her footsteps pound back down the hallway as she ran to the kitchen, no doubt to relay the entire conversation back to Stan enough times so the old man wouldn’t have an excuse if the food mysteriously ‘vanished’.

Grabbing a wash cloth, Dipper scrubbed at his face, peeking around the shower curtain to look in the mirror (steadily being covered with fog) to make sure he got all of it. Everyone on his arms flaked off, but there was a red stain on his skin that wouldn’t come off.

 _Brings a whole new meaning to blood staining your hands,_ he thought just a bit hysterically and pinched himself roughly on the inside of his arm to stop it all from boiling over. The soap was about half gone by the time he gave up, hoping that everyone would just think of it as some odd sunburn.

He dried, pulled on the new clothes, gathered up the plastic bag holding the wastebasket garbage, and raced downstairs to find a plate covered in food waiting for him. He threw everything outside first before settling at the table. Mabel was there, mostly finished from her head start at the food, with Stan hiding behind the _Gossiper_. “Took you long enough,” his sister grinned and pushed his plate forward as Dipper claimed a seat. “You do smell better, though.”

“Thank you—wait, are you saying I _smelled,_ before?”

She raised one eyebrow, looked over his new, clean clothes, and sniffed. “Maybe a little,” Mabel admitted.

Dipper really couldn’t argue with that. When was the last time he did his laundry? He started to eat, working his way slowly through the stack of pancakes before gradually speeding up until his fork was shovelling food into his mouth. Mabel looked on with a mix between disgust and awe on her face and Stan, well, Stan just looked annoyed.

“Geeze, kid, I thought kids weren’t supposed to become bottomless pits until they were teens!”

Blinking, Dipper stared down at his mostly empty plate and shrugged sheepishly. “I guess I’m just hungry this morning.”

Which was odd because, _because,_ if he had actually eaten that person last night (no no don’t think of it like that, deep breathes), wouldn’t he be full? But then, where had the blood come from and why was he covered in it? Had it even _been_ human blood?

Was it all just a cruel prank? Were the bones even _real_?

The pancakes turned to ashes in his mouth but his hunger forced him to finish them and the rest of his breakfast. He took his plate to the sink with agonizing slowness, left the kitchen behind, and pounded up the stairs to dig around for the journal. There had to be some explanation. Spirits, hypnosis, maybe he had eaten something he wasn’t supposed to like a magical mushroom or the sandwiches he had for lunch the day before were more than just ham and cheese.

Dipper pulled the maroon book out from under his bed and poured over the pages, muttering to himself as he flipped through the illustrations and notes. Mabel came in and out, pausing to look over his shoulder a few times before fleeing down the stairs with her yarn and needles to make a new sweater.

After going through the journal the second time, Dipper snatched his writing pad and threw it at the wall. “This is useless!” He snarled, pacing across the floor, fingers digging into his hair, nails scratching over his scalp.

“Dipper?” Looking up, the twelve year old saw his sister peeking her head around the door and eyeing the mess of papers, pens, and books thrown about the floor. “Is everything okay?”

He opened his mouth to tell her yes, everything was fine, but then paused. “No, no it’s not,” he admitted and sat down on her bed. Pushing open the door, she made her way over to him, the mattress dipping slightly as she took the place by his side. “I don’t know what to do.”

Leaning back, Mabel nodded sagely and patted the bed. “Talk to me,” she said.

Laying down, Dipper did. He told her about waking up without any knowledge of how he got there or where he was, how long it took for him to get back to the Mystery Shack, the strange fact that he couldn’t remember even getting out of bed last night. He kept the bones out of it and waking up covered in blood. She didn’t need to think about that. “I’m worried if this is like what Bill did,” he admitted softly.

“Look, Dipper,” Mabel ran her hands over her skirt, smoothing the fabric in a way that told more about her anxiety and fear than just her tone. “I know you’re afraid of being possessed but I’m... I’m not sure that’s what it is.”

“But—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “The last time Bill possessed you, you were able to follow your body and see everything that he did, right?”

“Right.”

“This,” Mabel motioned to the mess on the floor. “This looks more like, I dunno, hypnosis or something.” She shrugged and looked away, staring at the ship painting hanging on the other side of the room. “You didn’t look all that bad last night just... in a hurry.”

Dipper sat up. “You _saw_ me? W-what did I look like? What did I _do_?”

She paused for a second, whether to gather her thoughts or something else he didn’t know. “You were hunched over,” Mabel murmured. “Like something was on your shoulders weighing you down. And you didn’t look at me when I called for you, like you couldn’t hear me.”

“And you just let me go?”

Mabel shrugged. “You were in a hurry! I thought you were just going to the bathroom or something! It’s not like you took your _shoes_ or anything with you.”

It had been the middle of the night, Dipper realized. There would have been no way she could have known he was going to end up in the middle of the woods. If she had just randomly gotten up, he would have assumed bathroom or midnight snack. “You’re right,” he said with a small sigh. “Was there anything else?”

“Hmm,” she tapped her bottom lip and frowned. “You avoided the moonlight as much as you could, but—”

“Wait,” Dipper frowned. “What? What do you mean by that?”

Mabel pointed out of the triangle shaped window. “There was a full moon last night, Dipper.” Her eyes shone with something—worry, most likely, but also something else. Something he couldn’t quite place. “Remember?”

He didn’t.

His sister left him some time after to fetch her yarn and needles from downstairs and Dipper settled back on the floor, tearing out his old list from the notepad, tossing it in the trash, and starting it anew. This time he added Mabel’s observations and chewed on the back of his pen as he went looking through the journal a third time.

If he had the other two, this probably would have been easier. Who knew what information those had that Number Three didn’t?

Mabel settled down beside him, the rhythmic clacking of her needles helping him relax. This was normal, this was just another day in Gravity Falls—solving the weird, paranormal. Dipper breathed out and felt his shoulders slump.

First, a list of creatures and or events affected or caused by the full moon. The journal, while one of the better resources, wasn’t complete. So Dipper packed up and headed to the library, Mabel following behind.

An hour later, Dipper realized just how _long_ that list was.

His sister was snickering, reading a book about some legend or whatever as Dipper stared at the several pages worth of magical creatures. “This is going to take a while,” he grumbled, but got to work anyway.

Everything that liked the moonlight was quickly scratched out—he had avoided it for some reason or another.

“Hey, Dipper,” his sister said after a while.

Humming, he looked up and promptly lurched back as his brain processed the large, white fangs and glowing, golden eyes. Mabel held the book out, pointing at the creature—at the _wolf_. Cursive writing said _werewolf_ in the corner and Dipper frowned. “Very funny,” he muttered.

But he had been bit, hadn’t he? When he and Mabel switched bodies all those days ago. Dipper couldn’t remember if it had been a full moon or not but there was a wolf. The bite scar on his leg twinged. Stan had taken him to get a rabies shot and some bandages, but even Mabel had commented on how it healed with relative quickness. “I-I don’t know,” the twelve year old said at last. If he _was_ , though.

Those bones would make perfect sense, wouldn’t they? And if he changed back in the morning that would explain why he was so hungry—Dipper slammed his notebook shut and started packing everything up into his backpack. “We have to go,” he told Mabel and grabbed the book on werewolves to check out using their Grunkle’s library card.

“You don’t actually think—” She started, the humour whisked away in an instant.

“I don’t know anymore,” Dipper murmured. How could he? The world had turned upside down within twelve hours leaving him like canary dropped down in a mine, scared and knowing that something was wrong.

If he had killed someone, though. If he had murdered someone in the woods, what was going to stop him from turning on his sister? On Stan, Soos, or Wendy?

 _I need to get out of here_.

Making their way through Gravity Falls, heading back to the Mystery Shack, Dipper made sure to keep out of sight of everyone. He tugged Mabel behind him, scrambling through the alleys and cutting across grass to the dirt road leading up to Stan’s house. The police wouldn’t find the body for a couple of days, not until a missing person’s report went out.

 _He had eaten someone_. An actual _person_. Stripped them of everything—internal organs, skin, muscles. _There had been nothing but bones_.

Dipper lurched, leaned over one of the bushes by the road, and promptly emptied his stomach of everything he had eaten that morning. Mabel rubbed his back, a comforting presence even as he poured his innards all over the ground. She offered a water bottle when he stood back up, brown eyes—matching to his own, identical in every way—moving over his face with more seriousness than he’d ever seen before.

“I’m okay,” he managed after gurgling and spitting a couple of times. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” she said and hooked her arm with his, leading her brother back to the shack.

Mabel was right, but Dipper closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to ease the pounding of his heart. He would kill again. The next full moon, the one after that. Could he put that on his conscious? Could he put that on _hers_?

He knew the answer before the question even finished.

So while Mabel nervously rattled on about werewolves and how he couldn’t possibly be one (“The book will prove it! I mean, you don’t have hairy palms or anything, right?”), Dipper made plans. He would pack, leave, find help or become a hermit. As long as he wasn’t a danger to his family anymore.

Claiming a headache, he wandered upstairs, closed and locked the door to the attic, and went about packing the small amount of items he needed into his suitcase and backpack. He’ll figure the rest out later, right? He was smart, after all. A flash of gold caught his eye and Dipper turned to look at the journal sitting on the bed.

For a long moment, he wondered if he should take it with him before realizing that, no, it would be a far better help here, in Gravity Falls. Maybe Mabel will make use of it, perhaps Stan would use it to make new attractions. Dipper shoved the last of his clothes into the suitcase, shoved it under his bed, and laid down on the mattress.

He would need all the sleep he could get.

When Dipper woke up, the sun was going down, dinner was ready, and laughter filled the Mystery Shack. He and Mabel settled down to watch some estranged Gravity Falls cartoon before heading up to bed. They wished each other a good night and he stayed up with the light on, pulling out his notebook and a pen to write a letter.

At midnight, he left the folded note on his bed, carried his suitcase down the stairs, and was outside before anyone was any wiser. There were multiple reasons to look back, but he didn’t, walking out onto the road and having only one plan in mind; to go north.

There were wolves north. Wolves and snow and open spaces.

In the attic of the Mystery Shack, the slim bit of paper with Dipper’s writing was blown slightly open by the fan in the corner before it was pushed off the bed where it hit the wall underneath the sailboat painting. For a tense second, it settled there, pushed up against the wood, before another breeze tilted it just enough so it could slide down into the crack. The letter landed upon a layer of dust that hadn’t seen the sunlight since the twins had moved in, hidden from the sight of prying eyes that would go looking for it.

 _Dear Mabel_ , the hastily written, almost scrawling penmanship said, _I’m so sorry but I have to leave. You, Stan, even Soos and Wendy are in danger if I stay. I didn’t tell you this earlier because I was afraid but... I think I killed someone last night. I don’t remember what happened and I want to get as far away from here as I can so it won’t ever happen again. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe, one day, if I can control it I’ll be able to come back._

_Please forgive me._

_I love you._

_Dipper_


	2. Witching Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Self harm (mention)

_Five years later..._

The thing is, some people will tell you that werewolves don’t exist. But, then again, people thought that the platypus was nothing more than a beaver with a bill taped to its face.

Now look at where we are. The platypus is real and people have only been thinking of them for a hundred years. Legends of humans turning into wolves have been around for far longer. What does that say about them?

Dipper Pines was one such creature. Not a platypus, though that would be a far more interesting story than this one, but a werewolf.

People backpacking through Oregon was such a common sight that Dipper was glad no one stopped for him, rolling down their windows to ask if he needed a ride. It was nice, sure, and the folks in Washington probably didn’t really think about it (seventeen year old by himself? Yeah, that was pretty questionable), but it _did_ get annoying after a while.

A ride would probably cut his time in half. He wanted to enjoy the scenery, take in the sites, put off this moment for as long as he could. Just simple things.

Following a deer trail, he checked the position of the sun, looked at the map absently, and just continued to walk. A squirrel chattered at him when he got too close, a woodpecker seemed to be following him, but it was a nice day. The woods didn’t seem as scary now as they had five years ago; their towering figures not like giants but gentle, guiding friends. Some groaned and shifted under a breeze that shook their tops. Others were still and quiet, their silence unnoticed under the assortment of other sounds.

The teenager (seventeen and almost eighteen in the next coming months) didn’t stop for lunch, eating a few granola bars and some pieces of jerky as he walked, and continued on until the sun was dropping in the sky, vanishing behind the trees. Dipper found a large tree—the trunk thick enough he couldn’t wrap his arms around it—and started to climb up to the higher, thicker boughs. Laying his pack along two, he laid out a tarp above his head in case it rained, hung up a hammock, and ate a bag of cereal while watching the sun set along the treetops.  

Strapping a head lamp to his forehead—coving the constellation birth mark—Dipper pulled out the maroon journal with the faint, but still gleaming six fingered hand and a pen, reading over a few of the entries he already knew by heart and adding a few more of his own trek back home. There was a moon calendar stapled to the back cover and he crossed off another day, checked when the full moon was, and made a few notes on whether or not he would reach Gravity Falls by then (he would unless there was a major detour he decided to take half way).

A rustling sound from below had the teenager leaned over, looking down from his makeshift shelter to the creature staring up at him from the base of the tree. It was a wolf, smaller than those he had run into in Canada and pretty far from home. They tilted their heads to the side, watching each other before the canine turned and bounded back through the underbrush.

In the morning Dipper walked again. His backpack was heavy against his spine, the woods stretching out on either side of him, but it was peaceful.

And it was quiet. 

The sun was still rising, the sky lit with a pink glow, but it was beautiful and precious. At some point, the deer trail sloped downwards and up again; easy walking for anyone following it. Eventually, however, Dipper was forced to leave the  path in order to follow a river south. It would, he knew, take him to the falls that went down into the valley holding his Great Uncle's house.

For a few, long moments, he stood by the bank and watched the fish swim lazily under the clear waters. They were a distraction, he knew, but Dipper couldn't tear himself away. Each of them swam in that figure eight pattern—fins almost brushing but not quite. It was the wolf in him that eventually spurred him on. It grew restless underneath his skin, the thought of finding family, of seeing kin again something so amazing after five years of almost-family. 

So Dipper walked on, careful to stay a ways from the bank in case some rock decided to take him with it. The sounds of the falls grew closer, his head perking up at the roar and he picked up the pace just a tad. Passing through the trees, he stopped just in time to stand on the side of the cliff going over Gravity Falls.

The town stretched out below him. Quiet and unassuming, tricking the watcher into a lure of thinking this place was just like any other small town.  On the water tower, Robbie’s old Muffin had faded, a few more buildings were scattered about than he remembered, but it was home. Gravity Falls itself was like a burning light under the midday sun—people walking around like little ants. And there was the road leading up to the Mystery Shack. Winding its way through the woods, large trees blocking the actual building from view.

Taking a deep breath, Dipper started his trek down the rocky cliff side. Stone bit into his fingers; that granite and sandstone. But enough practice had made him good at scaling rocks and he dropped down about halfway into the valley in just an hour. Eating his lunch under the hot sun, Dipper shed off his shirt and stuffed it into the large pack.

Water from the falls was spraying in his direction; cooling him off but also making the rocks themselves incredibly slick. The grip on his shoes were already wearing thin so he took those off, too. The fact that he could also place them underneath the rainbow spring also cooled him off, so it was actually a plus.

Stomach full, Dipper started again, heading downwards like an ant along a hill. He wondered absently what it might look like to the people in the valley before he realized that they were pretty oblivious when he was twelve, that probably hadn't changed much in five years.

A herd of deer was waiting for him at the bottom, laying around the side of the lake, basking in the same, cool spray. They looked up at him, smelling the air, but none of them were poised to flee. A predator could walk among a herd of prey without them panicking—they knew the scent of hunger and signs of hunting. He made sure they didn’t see it in him.

It was a slow trek along the lake. Some people were out on boats, others were hanging out along the shore, and Dipper avoided all of them. The road to the town was just as long as he remembered, but Gravity Falls...

Pausing on the edge once he reached it, the werewolf looked across the old buildings. There was the church, the library, town hall. Some posters were put up on lamp posts, what looked like missing persons. One was a lady with frizzy, grey hair and wide eyes. Some tourists getting lost in the woods, he guessed.

Or maybe the gnomes got them.

The road to the Mystery Shack was under his feet before he even realized he had passed through the main part of the town and, before he could barge in, Dipper ducked into the woods. He made his way around the parking lot, keeping out of sight of anyone who would come up the road.

There, sitting by the front door to the gift shop, was Waddles. The pig had grown a bit from the last time Dipper had seen him and was dozing in the sunlight. Beside him was a teenager. Her brown hair braided down her back a pink sweater with some frayed edges and hanging over one shoulder hung loosely around her form. A pair of galaxy covered tights stopped at her ankles, leaving her barefoot.

Mabel.

She rubbed Waddle’s ears and he noticed the thick, white bandages wrapped around her  right arm like a boxer might wrap their hands before a fight. Stepping back, Dipper searched for a twig and put all of his weight on it.

His twin looked up with a frown. The pig snorted and she patted him on the head before getting to her feet. More loyal than a dog, that animal, but he did stay behind as she went to check out the trees. There could have been a hand signal there. Maybe.

As she entered the trees, Dipper continued to move backwards, careful to leave a trail of sounds until they were just far enough from the shack that someone wouldn’t be able to see them from the door. Mabel was holding on to a charm hanging around her neck, eyes narrowed as she scanned the trees.

Dipper stepped into her line of sight and watched as shock covered her features.

He was prepared for fainting, for a scream, for anything really.

He wasn’t exactly ready for a punch.

“You utter—!”

It was quite a nice left hook, slamming into his cheek and knocking him back a few steps. And she was _fast_ ; by the time he regained his footing, she was there again, another punch coming down—Dipper caught her fist. “Mabel—”

“Five years, Dipper!”

He caught her other wrist as she tried to slap him. The bandages felt itchy against his skin and, from the flash of tight pain across her face, he had touched something injured. This close, he could see a pale strip of skin along her left arm, starting at the back of her hand and vanishing beneath the sleeves of the sweater. “I know,” Dipper said, loosening his grip enough that she could get free if she wanted to. “I know, I know I never thought—”

She ripped out of his grip and paced through the trees, every muscle tightened with unreleased energy. She could have been a wolf with all the fury under her skin. “Mabel—”

“No,” his sister held one finger in front of his face. “No. Shut up for a moment.”

Dipper did and just watched as she walked back and forth, wearing a line in the dirt. His sister took a few deep breaths as if trying to calm herself down, dug her hands into her hair, crossed her arms over her chest, and muttered beneath her breath.

Finally, Mabel turned to her twin, eyes blazing. “So you’re a werewolf then?” She snapped. “That’s why you left?” Something burned deep in her eyes. Something not quite human.

“Yes,” he said.

She clutched the charm around her neck until her knuckles turned white and, on instinct, Dipper took a deep breath.

And froze.

There was a sickly sweet smell on the air. Something like watermelon, cinnamon, and daisies. Mabel took a step back.

Dipper took a step forward. He recognized that smell or, at least, something like it. “Mabel.”

“Leave it, Dipper,” she snapped, still walking backward. He followed every step though didn’t get too much into her space.

But he shook his head. “You’re a witch,” the werewolf murmured. “You’re a _witch_.”

“Why don’t you go shout it off Town Hall while you’re at it?” Mabel drawled and crossed her arms protectively over her chest, ducking her head down to avoid looking in his eyes. Five years away and his sister— _his_ sister—had managed to become one of the most terrifying magical beings in the world.

She didn’t look all too pleased about it.

“How?” Dipper choked out.

If his sister had been a wolf, she would have bristled. The air around them grew heavy. “You don’t get to ask me that,” Mabel snapped. “Not yet.”

He was about to say otherwise and paused because no, she was right. “I’m sorry,” Dipper said instead. “You’re right, I can’t just... I can’t come back and expect that from you and I’m sorry.”

Wide, brown eyes blinked and he noted that they had flecks of gold and green in them now. Not enough to make them hazel, but just enough to create a spellbinding mix of colours. “Thank you,” Mabel murmured and they stood there for a few moments, listening to the wind in the trees, the sound of tourists around the shack.

It was all broken by Dipper’s stomach growling. He winced and Mabel sighed, fighting the small smile that was trying to break out on her face. “Come on,” she said, turning to head back to the tourist trap. “Besides, you can’t avoid everyone else forever.”

He winced.

They made it to the kitchen without seeing anyone and Dipper could hear Stan giving a tour some rooms over and the cash register in the gift shop clunked and chimed, ringing up orders. Mabel dug out some lunch meat from the fridge, some ladder clunked about outside, and he was so focused on listening for the sounds that _should_ be there he never noticed the person that came into the kitchen.

“Mabel, get down!”

Dipper spun around as his sister threw herself to the floor on instinct alone, covering her head with her arms. He snarled on reflex and froze when a crossbow bolt levelled between his eyes. The weapon itself was held by a man who looked like Grunkle Stan—glasses included—except he wore a beige trench coat over a red turtleneck, and the grey hair was a tad darker than what the werewolf remembered.

“Wait!” Mabel scrambled to her feet and pushed the crossbow away. “Grunkle Ford, no, this is Dipper!”

“The kid’s a werewolf!”

She pushed the man’s arms down until the bolt was pointing to the floor. “It’s _Dipper_ ,” Mabel urged. “Dipper Pines! Your _nephew_!”

Dipper had shoved himself behind one of the kitchen chairs, ready to use it as a shield.

The man—Grunkle Ford? _They had another Grunkle? What?_ —looked the werewolf over with narrowed eyes before turning to Mabel. “He’s dangerous,” he said.

“So am I,” Mabel returned. “So are cats and dogs and _cows_.”

They stared each other down for a few seconds before Ford sighed and clicked the safety on the crossbow. He set it off to the side and offered a hand. “Stanford Pines, nice to meet you.” Unsurprisingly, he didn’t sound all that thrilled but was willing to put his grievances aside. For now.

“Dipper—wait, _Stanford_?”

The man groaned. “It’s a long story, I don’t have time to tell it.” Grabbing a bowl of grapes from the fridge, he made his way out of the kitchen. “If you need me,” he called. “I’ll be in the basement.” And he was gone.

“Basement?” Dipper frowned. “The shack doesn’t have a basement, and who was that guy? If he’s Stanford then who—”

Mabel tossed him a package of ham. “You missed a lot,” she said and she didn’t mean it in a mean way but... Dipper felt a sting. He _had_. There was no denying that. The two of them worked in silence after that, lost in their own thoughts and the basic structure of making a lunch.

They made seven ham and cheese sandwiches before heading upstairs so Dipper could eat in peace without being stumbled upon by other curious residents. His side of the attic was just how he had left it five years ago though someone had been through to clean—there wasn’t any dust clinging to anything, but it was kept as some sort of... memorial, he supposed. Even the sail boat painting hadn’t moved in the past five years.

Mabel’s side, on the other hand, had gone from bright colours and boy band posters to drawings, paintings, and small hand crafted nets holding various objects from stuffed animals to art supplies.

A desk had been moved to where the old bedside table had been and he sat in the chair, eating slowly as his sister dug around in some drawers. Dipper took the time to look around after setting his backpack on the floor—the section that had been blocked off by a thick curtain five years ago was open and cleaned. There was a work table with a closed laptop sitting off to the side, some half finished object sitting in the middle made of what looked like clay. Some flowers and other plants hung from the ceiling, drying in the dull sunlight that just managed to make its way through the window.

Mabel kicked the drawer shut with her foot, setting a leather bag and a loose t-shirt out on the bed. Dipper watched as she shed her large sweater, dropping it onto the bed leaving his sister in just a simple, black tank top and got his first, good look at her. The scars on her left arm swirled and twisted across her skin, leaving large, deep marks all the way from her wrist to her shoulder. They faded in and out in some places, not as bad as he was sure they must have been, once upon a time.

To an untrained eye, they looked like a rope burn except for the way that the skin was puckered and a light pink.

Then, there were the bandages wrapped around her writing hand. They went all the way up to her elbow and were brand new based upon how clean they were. Mabel moved as if she was used to it being there—or that the injury beneath was causing enough pain to constantly remind her. But she rubbed her wrist a few times, he noticed, as if it was some sort of itch in the back of her mind.

Dipper finished the last of the sandwiches as she pulled the loose shirt over her head, eating quicker now that he didn’t have the urge to stall. “What, uh,” he started and wiped the crumbs off his pants as her shoulders tensed up. “What happened to your hand?”

“Fire,” Mabel said, waving her left one, fingers wiggling as she ducked down to rummage through a chest sitting at the end of her bed. It smelled of herbs, leather, and wood. The werewolf fought the curiosity welling up in his stomach.

Sitting down on his old bed, Dipper cleared his throat. “And the… the other one?”

She had been lifting up a plastic bag—it looked as if it was filled with some sort of dried plant—when she froze. Her fingers curled, knuckles turning white as it looked as though she would rip the material apart. “Nothing.”

“Mabel—”

“It’s nothing, Dipper.” She shoved the bag into her back pocket, grabbed her messenger bag off the floor,  and turned so her brown hair blocked her face so he couldn’t see her expression. “I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

Watching her go, Dipper dug his fingers into his thighs, waited until the sound of her footsteps faded down the stairs, and cursed violently. He rubbed his eyes then his mouth, shooting up on his feet and pacing towards the door and back to the bed before grabbing his backpack and shooting down the stairs. “Mabel!” He yelled, just about tripping over his own feet and having to hold onto the banister for balance. “Mabel!”

Bursting out the front door, he saw her by the edge of the woods. She turned to look back at him, the shadows of the trees creeping forward, her blue headband sparkling from small amounts of glitter sprinkled along it. Her eyes were watching as he came closer, staring even as he paused before her, swallowing down the rushed words rising in the back of his throat. “Hey, uh… can I, you know, come with?”

Her hands tightened around the strap of the messenger bag and he watched his sister bite her lip, glance back into the woods, and then turn around to face him again. “Sure,” Mabel tugged on the leather some more, and shuffled her feet. After a moment, as if finding her courage, she straightened her spine and turned, heading into the trees.

Dipper followed behind, the grin on his face making his jaw ache. For a while he just watched as she picked leaves and flowers, carefully placing them in little pouches. “How’s, uh, how’s mom and dad?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I dunno,” picking at a thread with her fingers, Mabel bit her lip and looked towards the ground, refusing to meet his gaze.

“You ‘don’t know’?” Dipper frowned. “How can you not  _know_?”

A stem snapped under her fingers as she yanked another leaf off a plant, this time her grip and yank far more vicious. “It’s not like they ever tell me anything,” Mabel’s hands hovered about awkwardly for a moment as if looking for a pocket on a sweatshirt that wasn’t there before they gave up. Hunching her shoulders, the witch scowled and walked away from him. “I’m the stupid one, remember?”

He reached out without thinking, grapping her forearm before she could completely move away. “Mabel, that’s—” They both froze, staring at each other before their eyes dropped down to the bandages that were wrapped around her skin, his fingers on top of the white cotton. Dipper ripped his hand away as if she had become like a stove underneath him. “Sorry,” he looked back up at her face and those wide, brown eyes. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Why did you leave?”

Dipper tried to say something, but it was as if his vocal chords had been swept away. He watched as she pulled her arm close to her chest, cradling it like it was Waddles and they were twelve again. “Mabel—”

“ _Why_?” Her gaze blazed with that hungry, hidden fire before she looked away, gaze up on the sky as she took deep breaths to calm the slight wobble in her bottle lip.

He wanted to lean forward and hold her, he wanted to let her sink against him like she used to when they were young. Instead Dipper was forced to watch her shudder, watch the water gather across her eyelashes, hear the breaking of her voice as it tore his heart like a shredder and dropped his stomach like they were going down a sudden mountain slope. “I needed to,” he said and winced at the selfishness in those three words. “I told you in the letter—”

Mabel turned to look at him, her eyes growing wide. “Letter?”

They stared at each other and Dipper felt the muscles in his chest freeze. “I-I left you a _letter_ ,” he said again, thinking about how his side of the room had gone untouched except for the occasional dusting—the posters, the bedspread. “Mabel,  _Mabel_ ; I left you a letter,” he took her by the unwrapped hand, pulling her back towards the shack—just like the days when they were young and still innocent and he led them on adventures through Gravity Falls. “Of  _course_  I left you a letter.”

They almost ran back to the shack, slamming the door open and racing up the stairs. Dipper only let go of her to search around the pillow; picking it up, setting it down. He searched the sheets, the drawers, and then, finally, under the bed where a folded piece of loose-leaf paper was sitting under a layer of dust. He wiggled underneath the mattress and grabbed it, fingers smearing across the grey surface before he pulled it back out and offered it to his sister.

She held it like it was one of her old, precious dolls—running a nail over her scrawled out name before opening it slowly. He watched her eyes flick back and forth, reading over his twelve year old self’s words.

Mabel’s knees went out about halfway through and Dipper yelped, jumping forward to catch her and missing as she landed on the ground, her knees pressed up to her chest, butt flat against the floor. She kept reading as he kneeled down in front of her. She kept reading even as her hands started to shake and her eyes welled with tears.

In a moment of breathless silence, she looked up at Dipper. Each second was counted out with the beat of his heart in his chest even though it seemed like a year had passed before the tears rolled down her cheeks. With a great, gasping sob, she reached for him and he leaned into her, wrapping one arm around her back and the other around her shoulders as she buried her face against him. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered as she shook against him, his shirt growing damp. “I’m  _so_  sorry, Mabel.”

Her hands held onto him as if he was the lifeboat and she was drowning at sea, each sob going through her skinny frame like earthquakes. “ _Dipper_ ,” she said, not asking, not wondering, just saying. “ _Dipper, Dipper, Dipper_.”

“I’ll never leave you again,” he murmured against her skin, feeling her nails dig into his back at the words. “God, Mabel; I’m so, _so_  sorry.”

The paper crinkled in her fist as she held on, their bodies pressed together. Dipper only pulled back when the shadows on the wall were growing longer and the sun was dipping below the tree line. Her head rested on his shoulder even as her arms dropped, falling across their laps.

Taking her hands in his, Dipper rubbed his hands up and down her arms—careful over the bandages. When he reached just above her wrist, however, he felt something wet and warm. “Mabel,” he stared at the splotches of red along the white. “You’re bleeding.”

Mabel stayed there for a while, her breathing slow, back rising and falling, just staring at the spots of crimson. When she did move, the witch shot up, scrambling onto her feet and sprinting for the closet. She dug through a few things on the shelves before grabbing a small, white kit with a large, red cross on the front.

Dipper followed her to the bathroom, stopping the closing door with the toe of his boot. “Let me help you,” he said, hands out as she held the box to her chest, taking slow steps backwards towards the shower. “Mabel—”

For a long moment, he watched her chest rise and fall, her eyes bloodshot from crying, hair hanging down along her face. The red spots were growing larger, blood seeping through the bandage. Dipper took a slow step towards his sister, then another and another before reaching out to take the first aid kit from her hands.

He shut the door to the bathroom before guiding her down onto the toilet seat. When he reached for the bandage, she flinched away, pulling her arm back up to her chest. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Dipper gave her a small smile and gently pulled her hand closer to him. He sat on the bathtub, giving her open access to the door if she did decide to run, and started unwrapping the bandage from the top down. “You did a really good job, though.”

Mabel shifted about and bit her lip as he reached the gauze pads taped on her skin. They were placed like Dalmatian spots over her arm—though only one was bloody. Dipper tossed the bandage in the trash and rummaged through the kit for more supplies and laid them out across his lap before reaching for her arm again.

He hadn’t ever really needed to use first aid over the past few years. Werewolves didn’t have a need for bandages unless they were really injured. Even then, something as complex as a collapsed lung could heal in twenty-four hours.

She didn’t pull away, but he heard her hitching breath as he started to pull the tape off. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, Dipper realized. The wound was just bleeding a lot more than he would have expected. Ripping open one of the wipe packages with his teeth, he started to wipe up the mess on his sister’s arm and frowned when the wound was starting to be revealed.

Hissing as the alcohol stung, Mabel tugged half-heartedly but he held onto her arm firmly, wiping away the rest of the blood until her skin was bare before him—naked with nothing left to hide.

Someone had carved WITCH into his sister’s skin with a thick, blunt knife.

Dipper stared at the crude, deep letters, the bloody wipe dropping to the floor, his brown eyes fading away to gold as a sudden, thick rage pulled the wolf forward. He hadn’t been a recluse during his time away; quite the opposite.

But he knew what people did to witches.

What werewolves, vampires, even _fae_ did to witches.

He would tear them apart, rip them to shreds before the big, bad wolf came hunting for him. They could have only done it someplace out of the way. In Gravity Falls, that was mostly anywhere that wasn’t the town. A witch had been branded before for hiding her abilities. Dipper had been forced to watch it long ago.

Had someone tried to do that Mabel?

There would have been no one to help her in the deep parts of the forest. How frightened she must have been. Did they leave her there to walk home? Did… did they do anything else?

That furious, boiling, anger of the wolf was rising up in his stomach, clawing up after all those years in a way he had never felt before. The canines in his upper jaw were growing and he must’ve looked animalistic as a snarl rose up in the back of his throat.  

It tasted sweet in his mouth.

“Who did this?” His voice was deeper, rougher, coming from the back of his tongue. Dipper watched her fingers curl as she didn’t answer him and he reached for the second gauze pad and took that off, then the next and the next until he could stare at the scabbed cuts in that soft, perfect skin.

“Dipper,” her voice was soft and his eyes snapped to look at her, his head following at a much slower pace. The expression on her face was unreadable for a moment and Dipper leaned forward, unblinking to examine her. She had no desire to speak about it and he huffed, turning back to her arm and calmly taping the gauze back on and wrapping a new bandage around her injuries.

He finished, fingers gentle against her skin, and smoothed down the bandage—then Dipper was leaning over his sister, one hand on either side of her, their noses almost touching. It was the wolf in him that pressed their cheeks together and it was the wolf that pressed his face into her neck, recording her scent back into his memory.

Cupping her face with his hands, Dipper pressed their foreheads together, his eyes gleaming as magic crackled across their skin. He watched as her eyes changed—the deep, kindly brown a devastatingly neon purple from one second to the next.

Her skin smelt like cinnamon, wool, and paint.

Her magic smelt of strawberries.

“Dipper—”

There werewolf growled deep in his throat—a kinder growl, like a cat’s purr but coming from the belly of a beast that was at the top of the food chain. “I need to ask you a question,” he said.

Mabel shuddered, but their eyes stayed locked. Something heavy settled around them, like an invisible quilt or a layer of ice.

“Will you join me?” He said and the world seemed to stop spinning. Words, Dipper knew, were only secondary to intent. Without intent, the words were useless.

They weren’t useless now.

“Will you join me in pack, in blood, in hunt?” Dipper continued and watched his sister. She took a deep breath, but didn’t blink and didn’t pull away. He could feel her magic wrapping around his until it was almost a physical thing in the air. As if he could turn just slightly and _see_ it. “We claim you, Mabel Pines, daughter of earth and sky, guardian of magic. By my flesh and blood is our pack bond sealed, from this day you are mine to me and mine and I to you and yours.”

A deep burn started up in his chest. The burn of a new member being absorbed into the pack magic that surrounded all wolves. She become an orb in the back of his mind and he could feel her fear, her pain, and her strength. The ache on her arm became an ache on his and Dipper closed his eyes.

“Who did it?” The wolf growled.

“I did,” whispered the witch and he felt the truth in her as well as he heard it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters will be posted every day until I reach the one that I'm currently working on (chapter four).  
> Thanks for reading! Drop a review if you liked!


	3. Dancing Skeletons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Gore

“Five _years_ , Dipper!”

For an old man certainly getting along in years, Stan(ley?) Pines managed to have the same terrifying lungs that those who gave Mabel her genes possessed. The werewolf fought the urge to cover his ears and just winced instead. His sister had escaped when she could, ducking through the front door and leaving her brother to deal with the other three he had left behind.

“Do you even realize what trouble you put me through?! _They thought you died!_ ” Stan was gesturing widely, his movements angled, sporadic. “Did you even think that we could be able to help you? To ask around to see if there was anyone who could _teach_ you?”

Dipper flushed because, yeah, that hadn’t really occurred to his twelve year old self. “I was scared!” He shot back, arms waving above his head. “I panicked!”

Ford, who had been eating some candy bar, leaning over a stack of paper, looked up. “He _was_ twelve.”

“Stay out of this!” Stan snapped at his brother. Dipper was still trying to wrap his mind around that. Two grumpy Grunkles. The werewolf fought the urge to jump as Stan turned back to him and tossed the teenager a phone. “Call your parents, tell them everything, apologize multiple times, and then tell them you can be taken off the missing person’s list.”

Staring down at the device so he didn’t have to look up at his Grunkle, Dipper sighed and watched, out of the corner of his eye, as Stan stomped out of the kitchen. There was a crinkle from Ford’s candy bar wrapper and, finally, the werewolf turned to look at Wendy and Soos.

The redhead had her arms folded over her chest, a thunderous scowl on her face.

She had changed, that was easy enough to see. The lumberjack flannel had been replaced by a white t-shirt, some shorts that barely made it to the middle of her thigh, hiking boots, and some dark socks with little axes embroidered on them. Her hair had gotten longer and even more red—if that was possible—but her dark eyes looked like deep pits ready to eat him alive.

Soos, on the other hand, hadn’t changed a bit. Still wore the Mystery Shack shirt, still had the hat. He looked happier though, if Soos could look happier.

“Five _years_ ,” Wendy snapped and Dipper felt the wolf cower.

 _Coward,_ he shot at it.

 _She’s going to kill you_ , it said right back.

“You couldn’t have even _told_ us where you were going?” The redhead looked as if she would punch him and Dipper realized she was more than just _angry_. “Just one call, Dipper! Something to tell us that you weren’t dead!”

She was _Irish_ angry.

He took a step backwards. _Shit._

 _Told you_ , the wolf growled, but stayed in its nice, safe corner.

“You left _Mabel_ here to deal with your parents!” Wendy continued, not even bothered by the way the seventeen year old suddenly looked like she would go after him with her axe. Maybe she would. “Do you know what that did to her? _Loosing_ you?”

“I had to leave!” He said finally. Sure, his twelve year old self had made a mistake, but it turned out the better—he met people that helped him more than a cage in the basement would have, then his fear would have. “I had to get help!”

Wendy crossed her arms over her chest and watched him with narrowed eyes. “You could have gotten help here,” she returned just as sharply as before. “You didn’t have to _run_.”

“Yes I did!” Dipper realized that he was shouting now, that Soos had tears streaming down his face, that Ford was watching them with an emotionless expression on his face. “I _killed_ someone, Wendy!” His voice choked and the teenager swallowed. “the wolf killed someone,” he said softer. “I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—” He looked away from them and out the window where Mabel laid out on the grass, staring up at the moonless sky and the stars that stretched across the darkness. “I would rather _die_ than hurt you guys.”

The redhead still had her arms crossed over her chest, but her face had softened somewhat. Not enough to erase the anger, but enough to ease it for now. Sighing, Wendy looked away from him. “Dipper,” she said, her voice still hard, but no longer as harsh as it had been. “You made a mistake.”

He looked down at the ground, hands clenched into fists.

A hand rested on his shoulder and the werewolf looked up, startled. Wendy was there, not smiling, but no longer scowling either. “It’s time to fix it.”

Soos took that as his cue, it seemed, for he swooped in and drew Dipper into a hug that had his ribs groaning. The teenager wrapped his arms around the big man and hugged back—not as tightly, but tight enough that the handyman knew he meant it.

The two Mystery Shack employees left not long after that, leaving Dipper alone. He went outside to lay in the grass by Mabel and turned his eyes to the stars.

“How was it?” Her hands were folded across her lap, but there was a slight tilt to her tone. She knew exactly how it went.

Dipper sighed and rested his forehead against his knees. “As well as I thought it would go,” he grumbled, scratching behind Waddle’s ears. “I thought for sure you would join in.”

“I got my yelling out earlier,” that was just a slight lie, but not really on purpose. The werewolf knew she would yell at him again—five years was a lot to make up for. “And a couple of hits.”

Wasn’t that the truth? If it wasn’t for fast paced healing, Dipper was sure there would have been a bruise on his face for the next couple of days. He rubbed his jaw and caught the small smile Mabel tried to hide. Her pride thrummed in the back of his mind and the werewolf smirked. Leaning over, he nudged her with his shoulder and she pushed back, easily knocking him off balance and onto his side.

“I’m still mad at you,” she said with a huff, turning away from him and leaning back to continue gazing at the stars.

She was—not as much as before, but it throbbed in time to her heart beat, turning the purple orb a sharp auburn shade—and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah,” Dipper murmured. The greatest advice he had ever gotten, once upon a time, was that there was a time to simply stop apologizing. Sorry could only be said so many times before the guilty party stopped looking like they were actually sorry.

Opening his mouth, Dipper searched for a safe topic to talk about—the guy living in the basement? Where the basement was actually located and how could he get there? Deciding to go with Grunkle Ford, the werewolf took in a breath, turned to Mabel, and was promptly cut off by an shriek that cut through the peaceful night like an explosion. The witch was on her feet even before the sound cut off, racing into the trees with her brother on her tail. 

“Where did it come from?” Dipper spun on his heel in the trees as if sight alone would give him the answer. It was the cliffs. They made sound echo enough that it was difficult to locate on the best of days for human ears. Scent didn’t help either, all he could smell was the resin in the pine cones, a fire somewhere north of where they were, and Mabel.

For his, it was almost impossible, the scream having come from everywhere at once.

“It came from over here!” Mabel sprinted through the trees, jumping over a fallen pine and continuing without a pause in her step as if she had memorized everything about the ground years ago. Dipper scrambled after her, catching up with ease as they pushed through the underbrush. An aspen grove surrounded from one moment to the next, conifers replaced by light, golden leaves whispering with every movement. The eye shapes on the bark seemed like they were watching them, _following_ them, like Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

Dipper shuddered and took a deep breath, skidding to a halt when his nose twitched. He took a sniff, then another one. “Mabel!” He called for her as she walked around the grove, eyes peering past the white trunks into the darkness of the woods. “This way!”

Before, there had been nothing. No smells, no sounds. Now it seemed like the entire valley hosting Gravity Falls reeked of terror and blood. Dipper followed it. His nose wasn’t as strong as it would have been if he was in wolf form, but the smell itself was so strong that a human could probably make it out.

That said, Dipper never expected to come upon the scene so quickly, he almost tripped over his own feet and would have landed in a thorn bush had Mabel’s hand not snapped out, snatching the back of his shirt.

Instead, he stared into blank, grey eyes. They watched the sky, motionless and unblinking from a young, pretty face. The woman—for she was a woman—wore hiking clothes complete with backpacking pack, a half set up tent, and a just started fire that crackled merrily in a circle of stones with something roasting on a portable grill.

Dipper regained his balance, stepping back towards his sister as Mabel turned away, one hand pressed over her mouth and leaning over as if she was about to vomit. Her shoulders were shaking, eyes turned stubbornly away from the campsite. The werewolf couldn’t really blame her. Five years had made him desensitized to the scent of blood and a kill, but this... even this was just slaughter.

There was nothing below the woman’s ribcage, her shirt torn and bloody as if something had simply bitten her in half before leaving her there to rot.

“Jesus,” Dipper whispered and turned away, rubbing his face with his hands. _Jesus_. “Someone needs to call the police,” he said, reaching for his phone when Mabel stopped him, her hand resting on his arm. “What—”

“Look,” she whispered, pointing between the trees.

At first, the werewolf didn’t see anything but then... a shape came slinking from the shadows, gold eyes gleaming in the firelight. The coyote wasn’t looking at them and, instead, kept out of the firelight to stalk around the campsite. A scavenger most likely attracted by the smell of meat and blood.

Dipper snarled and the canine looked at him. It seemed to smile before turning back into the woods, slipping into the shadows with ease. Some shouting rose up not far away—some people who had been looking for the source of the scream, no doubt.

“We have to go,” Mabel tugged on his arm, pulling him back into the woods.

Digging his feet in, the werewolf stopped her from pulling him into the trees. “We need to find out who she is,” Dipper said, keeping his voice down.

The look his twin gave him was so full of exasperation that it actually made him pause. “You’re a werewolf,” she snapped. “I’m a witch. Both of us found at a scene of a dead body. What, exactly, do you think is _going_ to _happen_?”

“Fair point,” he muttered and yelped when she pulled him back into the woods. “Easy!”

“Shut up!” She hissed back at him and waved her hand at some bushes that suddenly grew three times as large, hiding them easily yet keeping the campground in sight.

Okay, yeah, this was probably a lot better for the two of them. Mabel settled against a tree, her thighs pressed against her chest as she rested her forehead against her knees and Dipper realized, with a start, that she had chosen a place just outside of human hearing but perfectly acceptable for his wolf.

There was a high possibility that she heard his thoughts because the smile on her face turned pleased. The wolf rose up until he and it were side by side, listening as a group of humans crashed through the under bush and stumbled upon the campsite.

“Fuck!” Someone breathed and another threw up further away, the harsh gagging sounding almost choked. “Fucking—”

“Elizabeth?”

“Jesus _Christ_.”

“Something ate her legs, they _ate her legs_.”

Dipper winced. Okay, so maybe he wouldn’t really get anything of importance out of this group. The woman’s name was Elizabeth, apparently she had come here with another band of tourists to do what? Camp?

Who would ever be crazy enough to camp in Gravity Falls?

Someone offered to call the police and the werewolf motioned for Mabel to head further back into the woods. They ducked between the trees, careful to keep a trunk between them and the campground until the twins reached the aspen grove. The witch had her hand wrapped around the charm hanging from her neck and watched Dipper pace from one end of the small clearing to the other.

“It has to be the wolf,” he muttered to himself. What else could kill a human so quickly and violently? Sure, there were bears and mountain lions but they would stay near a kill to defend it against scavengers and other predators.

_Bones lit up by early morning sunlight, nothing left of a body but them scattered through weeds, grass, and flowers._

_Human beings locked in cages, watching as a red wolf the size of a pony ripped a man in half with just teeth and claws as he screamed and screamed and **screamed**._

Dipper shook his head and pressed his hands against his ears, trying to drown out the echoes of his nightmares. It could have been a werewolf. It must have been a werewolf. He looked up at Mabel, his sister still sitting on the rock, hand clenched so tightly around the charm that her knuckles were turning white. She wasn’t looking at him but rather at her feet, examining the mix of leaves, grass, and pine needles flattened underneath her toes as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen.

For a moment, the werewolf wondered if she had seen the flashes he had and that the bond they now had due to the pack magic was reacting far deeper and stronger than it had with the other wolves because she was a witch.

But, no, there wasn’t any shadow of fear from her side. Just a sadness that weighed down on her shoulders and soul.

“Mabel,” Dipper murmured, taking a half step towards her and froze as she turned away. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I could have stopped it years ago,” she murmured, looking away from him.

The werewolf shook his head. “You can’t blame this on yourself,” Dipper said, sitting beside her. “You told me a long time ago that you can’t place the blame of evil creatures on your shoulders.”

Her shoulders relaxed just a bit. “We need to find it.” There was iron in Mabel’s voice and her eyes shone as they finally turned up to meet his. “We need to stop it.”

Dipper offered his hand to the witch. “Mystery twins?”

It was an olive branch. One filled with hope and promise.

“Mystery twins,” Mabel said, taking it with a small smile.

There was movement from the woods—most likely from the campers looking for whatever had killed their friend (pretty sure that was how horror movies started) and the twins turned to head back towards the shack.

“Who were the first to go missing?” Dipper glanced at Mabel, already in detective mode, and she frowned.

“You and a conspiracy theorist,” his sister said and paused. “Well, that the police know of. There are rumours that Mrs. Gleeful ran off before that but no one’s really sure.”

Dipper frowned. “Ran off?”

“To be honest,” Mabel muttered. “We’re all pretty sure Gideon just killed her.”

“Gideon?!”

She shot him a look that was more along the lines of ‘will you shut up and let me finish?’

“Sorry, sorry, continue.”

Mabel sighed. “He escaped a few weeks after you ran off along with a bunch of other inmates at the prison. _But_ , right after that people noticed that Mrs. Gleeful wasn’t around anymore.”

Nodding, Dipper turned back to the towering trees around them. “That makes sense,” he murmured. “So the first two were me and the conspiracy theorist? Did they ever find the body?”

“No,” the witch brushed her hair back with a frown. “They said the killer probably buried or burnt it—apparently she had a lot of video equipment that could have gotten the killer on camera.”

The werewolf froze. “Cameras?”

“What is it?”

Taking a deep breath, Dipper tried to calm the frantic thoughts. “What if that’s who I killed five years ago?” He said slowly. “The only missing person who’s body hadn’t been found yet? Went missing the same time I did?”

Mabel watched him with an unreadable expression. “You want to see if she got the attack on tape.”

He didn’t want to answer that. He didn’t _have_ to answer that.

The witch dragged one hand down her face. “This is so stupid, you know that, right?” But she knew the power of missing memories. Both of them had watched the damage of the Society of the Blind eye. They knew how much missing memories could haunt someone. “Fine, fine, do you know where the body is?”

“Yes,” Dipper said. He walked it often enough in his nightmares. The darkness wouldn’t be a problem; not many creatures were stupid enough to attack a witch and a werewolf. They reached the shack and he led her across the parking lot to the cluster of trees he had passed through coming back that fateful morning. With starlight to guide them, the twins entered the forest for the second time that evening.

It only took Dipper only an hour to admit that he was lost.

“Of course he knows the way,” Mabel muttered as he shuffled his feet, watching her sheepishly. “There’s no way the scenery could change in _five years_.” She lifted her hands and the bright, neon purple returned to her eyes. A breeze ruffled her hair and the stars shined all the brighter. “ _Thaispeáint dúinn an cosán!_ ”

Dipper jumped as an orb of light appeared in front of him, pulsing in time to his heart beat before zooming off between the trees, leaving a golden path for them to follow. “Follow the yellow brick road, Dorothy,” the werewolf murmured. His sister motioned him forward, eyes still purple, and they followed the magic through the woods.

After walking a ways, Dipper glanced at Mabel out of the corner of his eye before turning his gaze to the path. “Montana,” he murmured. “I was in Montana for about two years before I came back.”

“And before that?”

The werewolf paused. “I ran into some unsavoury people,” he said slowly. “The leader, the alpha, he... he believed that eating humans would give werewolves powers. Strength.”

Mabel watched him, her face lit up by the golden glow beneath their feet. “Was he right?”

Shrugging, Dipper kept his gaze stubbornly on the surrounding trees. “A bit,” he muttered and kicked out at a rock. “Eating humans is like a drug to werewolves and they do get stronger but...”

“It makes them weaker as well,” the witch said and smiled as her brother shot her a look. “The same could be said of herbs and potions or actual drugs.”

“Everything has a side effect,” Dipper agreed. “But this alpha... he kept humans in cages and let them out in this valley so his pack could hunt them down.” His eyes flashed gold. “One day he wanted his pack to hunt down a girl, fourteen, I think.” _She looked like you_ , but he didn’t say that out loud. “It was my initiation to the pack.”

Years later, he knew better. Knew that it was intent, not a hunt, that brought someone into the pack. There was no initiation, it was simply someone was accepted or they weren’t. He had been so happy to find people like him, though, that he hadn’t questioned it.

Mabel had wrapped her arms around herself. “Did you do it?”

“I couldn’t,” the werewolf looked up at the stars and smiled softly. “The alpha tried to kill me and I fought back. Luckily, the head wolf was around, ready to take out the pack anyway.”

“I hope you killed him,” The witch murmured, the cold in her voice chilling around them, making Dipper rub his hands over his arms. “I hope you won.”

This time her anger pulsed through him, but it was a warm kind, one not directed at him but for him instead. “I did,” the werewolf said proudly. “I killed him once he had none of his pack to cling to.” Dipper had spent two years without a pack behind him, learning to be strong on his own. The alpha had leaned on the strength his pack had given him. He had depended on it, in the end.

It had been his downfall.

“Do you have a pack now?”

Dipper shrugged and grinned at his sister. “You,” he said honestly. “I don’t really need anyone else.”

“I’m not a wolf,” she searched his face with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t expect you to be.”

Mabel huffed and turned away, but she was pleased with his answer. “I think,” she started after a moment. “I think that I ran into someone in that pack a few years ago.” Her frown was thoughtful. “Or, if he wasn’t part of that pack, then the practice of eating humans for power is not as secluded as your big bad wolf might believe.”

Dipper stared at her with wide eyes and Mabel laughed. “Did you think that the only things that haunt the forest are those that howl at the moon?” There was something around her, something huge and powerful before she turned back to the path and it was gone. “In any case,” she continued as if nothing happened and, perhaps, nothing had. “There is a monster in these woods. I’ve seen it.”

“Was it a rogue wolf?”

The witch sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was... so _hungry_...”

Almost tripping over a root, Dipper turned his attention back to the path and realized that they had reached the clearing. “This is it,” he said and Mabel snapped her fingers, the path forming the pulsing orb again. It floated above their heads like some distorted moon, lighting up the trees and bones in eerie light. “Look around for some camera equipment or a backpack.”

“Dipper,” Mabel murmured.

“It can’t be _too_ far—”

“ _Dipper!_ ”

The werewolf turned to look at his sister. She was pale underneath the unnatural light, eyes wide and still purple staring off into the trees. He followed her gaze and saw a small wisp that was growing larger with ever second until a woman was sitting on the rock, head in her hands, left foot so close to the skull that they could have been touching.

“Are you doing this?” Dipper murmured and Mabel shot him a look.

“She’s a _ghost_ , Dipper,” the witch hissed before raising her voice. “Hello?”

The woman didn’t move.

“What’s up with her?” The werewolf sniffed the air but got nothing. Not that he was surprised.

Mabel took a few steps forward. “Maybe she’s a repeater?”

“A what?”

Rolling her eyes, the witch motioned to the ghost. “You know? An apparition that repeats something like—”

“Their death,” Dipper finished.

The witch nodded her head, but never took her gaze away from the woman on the boulder. But the ghost did nothing but sit on the stone, head in her hands. Mabel took a few steps forward, her brother quickly following, and tried again. “Hello?”

The woman’s head shot up. “Who’s there?”

She couldn’t have been past twenty-five. Sharp eyes looked out from under the bangs that managed to escape the pony tail. In life she must have been a serious person—frown lines had been just forming in the corner of her mouth and she was dressed in all dark, form fitting clothing. If she had been hiking, that probably wasn’t what she was wearing but maybe a favoured outfit that her body had taken upon death. But she was coherent even after five years. Dipper frowned. It took a lot of emotion for a ghost to linger that long.

“My name’s Mabel, this is Dipper, we wanted to ask you some questions.”

As the ghost looked over them, she paused on Dipper, recognition sparking in her eyes. “I know what you are,” she said in a way humans would never dare to.

There’s no point lying when you’re already dead.

“How?” The werewolf said.

“Because she’s not a conspiracy theorist,” Mabel murmured. “That’s why there wasn’t any equipment, you never had any cameras, did you?”

The smile one the woman’s face was cold. “Clever witch,” she said and then she sighed and the malice seemed to be sucked right out of her. “You know what I was, then.”

“Monster hunter,” Mabel said softly. A breeze ruffled the treetops making the pines sway and their needles flutter. “I’m guessing you found what you were looking for?”

“Funny enough, I was killed before I could,” the ghost shrugged and glanced over at Dipper. There was sympathy on her hard features, softening them in a way that it probably had never done in life. “I can’t give you any answers. I don’t remember how I died. It’s funny, the way death catches up to you in the end.” She tilted her head back and looked up at the stars. “It’s peaceful out here, you know. I won’t mind spending a few more years in these woods.”

She was fading and the werewolf lurched forward. “Wait!” He called and she turned to him, her body already becoming lighter, less tangible. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

The ghost laughed. “Don’t speak the name of the dead, Dipper,” she said. “It’ll only make them linger.”

And she was gone. Dipper pushed his hand through the space over the boulder, but there was nothing left except for a mild cold that said nothing except that she had once been there. It was quickly fading, though. The warm, humid night taking its place. “Damn it!” He snarled, kicking out at a small rock, sending it crashing through the trees.

“Calm down, Dipper,” Mabel stayed where she was underneath the orb of light. “We’re not going to find any answers if you kick the evidence away.”

“It’s been five years, Mabel,” the werewolf snapped. “I doubt there’s any evidence left.”

Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms over her chest. “There is,” the witch snapped. “ _You_ were there.”

“I don’t remember any of it!” His eyes flashed amber before turning back to their normal brown. “ _Nothing!_ ”

“You saw it!” Mabel pointed out. “That means the memory is there! So what is it, Dipper?” The anger was pulsing through her, oozing through the bond. “Did you repress it so much that you _can’t_ remember? Are you so afraid of facing the fact that you could be a killer that you simply _refuse_ to acknowledge the memories? Or are you just afraid of knowing the _truth_?!”

Above them, the orb was slowly turning orange. A hunter’s moon hovering above them, bleeding colour into the clearing.

Dipper snarled. “I want to know the truth!”

Mabel pressed both her hands against his chest and shoved him back and Dipper fell backwards. The stars blurred above his head, spinning and twisting as the trees lengthened to monoliths. All the colour was sucked out of the world, draining away like water down a sink.

He fell and fell through darkness but it was only until he hit the ground that the werewolf realized that his eyes had closed somewhere along the way. Grass was beneath him, cushioning his body. It was softer than any other plant life, but Dipper still groaned as he sat up, rubbing at the back of his head.

“What the _hell_ , Mabel?”

She was standing before him, a beacon of light in the dark. Her clothing seemed all that brighter, her eyes glowing more than they had before. Around them, the woods were grey.

“Where are we?” Dipper looked around and saw nothing but trees.

“You know exactly where we are,” the witch said, her eyes flickering past his face to something over his shoulder.

Turning to look, the werewolf paused. A large library stood before them, polished in some places, broken in others. The sign itself had been broken by a set of claws scratching down the front.

The New York public Library. It was made entirely of white stone (though the greyscale of the mindscape didn’t really get that across. For all anyone knew it could have been a blinding yellow) with two large lions at the bottom of the steps. As they walked closer, though, Dipper realized that they weren’t lions at all.

They were wolves.

Six columns guarded the doorways, three chandeliers that looked more like iron cages hung from the top lighting up what should have been huge, glass windows. Rather, there were billowing curtains, blocking them from seeing what was inside.

Dipper took a step forward and paused. They were in his mind. Mabel had literally shoved him into his _mind._

The werewolf turned to his sister, staring at her with wide eyes.

“What the _fuck?_ ”


	4. Black and White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Blood, gore, graphic violence

 Dipper’s mind was lined with books. Where Stan’s memories had been represented by doors that opened and closed, the werewolf’s brain was fairly organized ( _fairly_ meaning that sometimes there was a mess on the floor) but he was a teenage boy and it was almost a shock to see everything so organized.

“Mabel,” He called after her, giving small bursts of speed as she kept her eyes on the shelves. “ _Mabel_.”

“ _What_?” She snapped back, turning on her brother with narrowed eyes. They still blazed purple—one of the only bits of colour in the greyscale landscape.

The werewolf lifted his hands to show he meant no harm. All the angles of his face were softened, lightened, so that he looked as non-threatening as possible. “I just want to talk,” Dipper said. “Nothing else.”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk,” the witch crossed her arms over her chest and played with the charm resting between her collarbones. It was the first time she hadn’t been gripping it with all her might and, with a start, Dipper realized that it was an anchor.

Perhaps Mermando gave it to her. “You brought us into the _Dreamscape_ , Mabel,” his eyes tried to meet hers, but she was doggedly staring at a sign above their heads, refusing to look back at him. “The only creature out there that could do this was _Bill_.”

Her hand tightened around the charm and, for a second, Dipper sensed something old, something _ancient_ and _deadly_. But the feeling left as soon as it had come, swallowed up by worry and just Mabel.

“I know that witches get their magic from other creatures,” Dipper said, his voice a low, soothing rumble meant to settle startled wolves. He didn’t know if it would work on her, but he spread peace through their bond anyway, hoping that, somehow, she could feel it.

“Then you would know more than me,” Mabel said, cutting him off. There was a glow around her, something bright that pulsed with each beat of her heart before it settled again. “I didn’t ask to become _this_ ,” she motioned down her body. “I never wanted _this_.” Pausing, the teenager glanced back at her brother. “What do you mean ‘get their magic from other creatures’?”

Dipper frowned. “Well, witches are created from humans getting magic introduced into their life force. I’m sure the one who turned you told you this.”

She shrugged and turned back to the bookshelves. “I wasn’t turned by anyone.”

“What?” The werewolf stared at the back of her head. “There must have been—witches don’t wake up with magic one day—” he shoulders grew more and more tense with each word Dipper spoke and he paused, watching as she ducked her head. “Someone _must_ have turned you, there’s no other explanation!”

“Who?” Mabel turned on him, eyes blazing. “ _Who_ could have done it, Dipper?” One of her hands flailed outwards, gesturing to something that wasn’t there. “I asked the Handwitch but the Society of the Blind Eye got to her first,” her breathing turned frantic and panicked, rushing in and out of her body with frightened wheezes. “No one _remembers_ how to make witches because _they_ took the _memories_.”

She started pacing, the book-memories around her rising into a small tornado that was quickly picking up speed around them. “And Bill would have never wanted anyone to be able to go in and out of the dreamscape—not without making a deal with them which would have bonded that person to him _for eternity_ —”

“Mabel!” Dipper called as one of the books slammed into the floor, dragged along the limestone, and was flung at his head. He managed to duck in time, the leather cover ruffling his hair as it flew past. “Mabel!”

“—And I don’t even _know_ what happened that night all I remember is falling out a stupid tree and something burned along my arm—”

The werewolf lurched forward, grabbing her shoulders and turning the witch so she could look into his eyes. “Mabel!” He shouted. “Calm down!”

All the books fell to the ground, landing in heaps and piles. Some were open, projecting their memories, others were face down on the floor and even more were tipped this way and that, yet still closed. The twins stared at them for a long moment before Mabel tore herself away and hid her face behind her hands.

“Sorry,” she murmured, her voice low enough that Dipper would’ve had a hard time picking it up if it wasn’t for the strengthened hearing. “Sorry.”

He didn’t reach out to touch her again. “It’s fine,” the werewolf soothed. “It’s fine, no harm done, see?” A simple thought sent the books back into their proper places. “Look; everything’s okay!”

Mabel sat down on the floor, leaned her head back against the bookcase, and breathed out heavily through her nose. Her hands dropped to her lap and, after a moment, Dipper joined her. They sat there for a bit in silence, looking around at the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the books, the blurry paintings on the walls.

“I don’t,” the witch started after a while, paused, swallowed, and tried again. “I don’t remember how I became like... _this_.” She traced the galaxies on her tights, playing connect the dots with the stars. “I remember running, being scared, and... and _hurting_.” Glancing at her brother out of the corner of her eye, Mabel smiled slightly. “Just like you and your memory.”

Dipper placed one of his hands palm up beside her, offering the comfort, but not forcing her to take it. “Maybe we can find yours after all of this?” He said.

Her palm was cool as it brushed his, fingers curling around his own until she squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

They sat like there for a few minutes more before Mabel extracted herself, climbing back up to her feet. “We should probably get going,” she said, dusting imaginary dust off her thighs.

“Yeah,” Dipper returned, but there was a grin on his face.

The pictures on the walls had cleared, showing images of Mabel, Stan, and Ford. They were of moments that Dipper wasn’t there for, bits of his sister that made it through the pack bond and settled within himself. She was smiling in most of them, hoisted over a great uncle’s shoulder, piggybacked around by Soos or Wendy, and, even, one that was just her and Waddles napping in the sun.

A sword was hanging upon the wall. A sword named Rose with the portrait of three wolves above it—one that was gold, one that was black, and the last that seemed to be made of fire. Friends, family, _pack_. Dipper turned away from them—it was no use hanging onto the recent past now when they were looking for something in particular.

Some paint was smeared here and there—Mabel’s influence even after all these years.

Gradually the room changed from the pristine limestone, paintings, and lighting to more muted shades. The walls turned to trees, the ground to gravel, rock, dirt, and small plants.

When the bookshelves ended, Mabel and Dipper found themselves staring at a large wolf.

It was bigger than a Great Dane, almost closer to the height of a pony, and sat like a sphinx before the path. Large paws with thick, black claws laid upon the ground, black, tan, brown, and white fur was so close to the colouration of an actual wolf that the illusion was kept for a second—and broken by the glowing, golden eyes. _I am no natural creature_ , those eyes said. _I am a being of Magic_.

There was no denying that this was the largest predator in the room, and the wolf knew it. Beyond the creature, however, were even more memories. Dipper could sense them just as he could sense that this beast, this carnivore, was a part of _him_.

“We need to pass,” Dipper told it.

“You do not,” said the wolf. Neither masculine nor feminine, its voice seemed to come from the creature itself and Dipper’s soul. It was the sound of cracking trees in the winter, wild fires in the summer, and the hunting song of blood and pack.

They were equals, so the teenager felt no qualms about staring his other self in the eye. “We must,” the boy said. “You guard a memory.”

“I guard _you_ ,” The wolf returned, gold eyes seemingly brighter with every word. “It is not a memory you wanted to see.”

“I want to see it now, though,” Dipper said.

Gold eyes blinked and the wolf tilted its head to the side.

“Wolves survive on instinct,” Mabel spoke up. “You protected him because he was too young.”

“Correct.”

The witch glanced at her brother and swallowed. “He’s no longer young,” she said. “And it would help him grow if he saw what you guard.” Mabel winced as the wolf turned its unblinking gaze to her and swallowed roughly.

“I will not hurt you,” said the wolf. “You are pack. And only the human halves fear the witch.”

Mabel frowned slightly, her brow furrowing. “I—”

Turning to Dipper, the predator got to its feet. Tall enough that their eyes could easily meet, the wolf gave its human counterpart a nod. “I will lead you to the memory,” it said and slid between the trees. The twins followed close behind, Mabel watching as the smooth, summer coat moved with every step. Thick, hunting hardened muscles moved underneath the fur.

A perfect predator.

“You may touch if you would like, pack sister,” the wolf glanced over its shoulder, a doggy smile on its face that carefully kept the long teeth hidden away. “You have shown remarkable self restraint.”

With an invitation like that, Mabel had no other choice but to bury her hands deep into the soft fur. “Oh my _goodness_ ,” she whispered and ran her fingers from the tips of the silky ears down the thick but still soft hair on its back. “Like those fluffy blankets.”

“Thank you,” the wolf said dryly, but amusement sparked in its gold eyes. “To remind you of a blanket, what an honour.”

Huffing, the witch continued to run her fingers through the fur as they walked, scratching the wolf behind the ears and grinning when it leaned into her touch like a cat. At last, though, they came upon a small river full of flashing images and their guide stopped by the edge. “The memory is there,” it said, nodding to the water. “You will have to jump in to witness it.”

Mabel leaned down to kiss the wolf on the forehead. “Thank you for helping us,” she said with a small, soft smile. “I hope to see you again.”

“I’m sure you will,” the wolf told her and licked her cheek. Turning to Dipper, the large creature met his eyes. “You may not like what you find,” it told him. “But you will come to peace with it.”

And then it shoved them into the water where they fell past blurred colours and muffled voices, though starless skies and winter mornings before falling upon the hardwood floor of the Mystery Shack five years ago. The full moon shone through the triangular window, lighting up the attic with a colourless, pale glow.

Mabel and Dipper, twelve years old, slept upon their beds. The girl was curled up around her stuffed tiger, blanket almost kicked off the bed.  Her twin had his arms wrapped around his pillow, hugging it close to his chest.

It was peaceful and quiet except for the sounds of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl.

“You were so cute,” Mabel whispered to her brother and he flushed, crossing his arms over his chest.

Before he could respond, memory Dipper moved. He sat up slowly, blinking open his eyes and they glowed much like the wolf’s had. Climbing along the mattress of the bed, avoiding the direct moonlight, the boy managed to get onto the floor.

A board squeaked beneath his foot and he froze.

“Dipper?” Memory Mabel sat up, rubbing her eyes. “What’re you doin’?”

He glanced back at her, barely keeping the unnatural light in his eyes hidden. “Shhh,” Dipper said, his voice deeper, darker than normal. The smell of tangy magic seeped into the room, settling upon the young girl’s shoulders, making her eyes droop. “Go back to sleep.”

“M’kay,” she murmured, curling back up on the bed, tugging her tiger closer. “’love you.”

The wolf, for it was the wolf, paused in the doorway and turned to smile kindly back at the sleeping child. “Sweet dreams,” it murmured, closing the door behind it as it left. Not bothering with socks or shoes, Dipper’s body headed down the stairs and out the shack, pausing briefly on the edge of the forest to breathe in the night air.

An owl hooted, large eyes watching from the totem pole. One hunter to another.

Mabel and Dipper trailed the memory as it went deeper into the woods, following a path only it knew existed until they reached a thinning stream.

“I don’t remember any of this,” Dipper murmured, watching his body pace along the water before choosing a spot covered in soft, squishy moss. “I’ve never even had glimpses of it.” They watched the twelve year old shed his red shirt, eyes still terrifyingly gold.

Mabel turned when he began taking off the shorts. “You came back with those in tatters,” she muttered thoughtfully. “You threw them away in the trash—I saw them.”

Blinking slowly, Dipper nodded. “You’re right,” he said after a moment and narrowed his eyes. “You’re _right_.” He watched his younger self take a deep breath and step into the light, turning his head up and basking under the full face of the moon. The first change was always the worse, he knew this.

It was another thing watching it though.

Bones snapping out of place and back together. Muscles appearing on the outside, flesh reforming around remade limbs, fur growing out of every bit of his body. And throughout it came the groans, whimpers, and huffs of pain. Dipper would be forever grateful that the wolf took the brunt of the pain for every change, willing or moon called, hurt a werewolf.

The groans gradually turned to whines and barks, cries to howls, grunts to whimpers, and then a wolf stood where Dipper had been, panting and trembling on four long, coltish legs. It was a younger wolf than the one they had seen just moments before, with the puppy-like muzzle and wide eyes. This was a creature that was just learning the art of the hunt and, when the wolf bounded forward, Mabel giggled as it promptly landed on its face.

“You’re _adorable_ ,” she whispered and Dipper grunted, crossing his arms across his chest.

Werewolves weren’t _adorable_. They were fierce and proud and—Dipper slapped one hand over his face when his other self tripped over its legs and fell in the river. Not so majestic.

Mabel was grinning and followed the young wolf as it found its legs bounding around, sniffing at fireflies, trees, rocks, and anything else it could find. Grumbling, Dipper followed, hands shoved deep into his pockets. His sister, who had always been a lover of animals, big or small, ran after the canine as it bounced between one thing and the next.

Returning to the river, the wolf picked up the clothes in its mouth and took off into the trees. Because it was a memory, the twins were dragged along even if they didn’t move, pulled behind as if they were merely watching a film. They watched memory Dipper taunt an owl, bat around a few field mice, and roll around in an open meadow filled with hip high wild flowers before the sky was beginning to brighten.

It played with the clothes, pawing at them, catching the fabric in its teeth and shaking its head like a dog. The tears in the fabric grew as the wolf continued to chew and drag the clothes along to each new part of the forest.

“Nothing,” Dipper murmured, turning from his memory-self to look at Mabel. The wolf hadn’t attacked anyone at all and the sun was rising. “I didn’t... I didn’t do anything!”

His sister was smiling at him. The witch’s eyes flickered over his shoulder, catching on the canine, and the expression on her face froze. “Dipper,” she murmured.

The wolf was standing to attention, ears forward, gaze blazing. Up in the sky, the moon had one more hour before it would be hidden behind the towering cliffs. Pointed ears twitched, moving back and forth.

Like a greyhound, the werewolf took off, darting through the trees. It had a single-minded focus; bounding over rocks and fallen trees, darting through trunks. This wasn’t a hunter’s run, the wolf wasn’t looking for prey.

But the woods were silent.

Dipper froze.

 _The woods were silent_.

Earlier, the hiker had screamed, but seconds later nothing could be heard or smelt in the air. His wolf was following the sound of _nothing_. Mabel seemed to catch onto it too, for she looked ahead through the trees as they were wrenched along by the memory.

They slammed through a familiar opening in the trees where a pile of bones were stacked up like some macabre sacrifice. Still the wolf continued, pausing only to drop the clothing on the ground before darting into the underbrush, leaping over a thorn bush—

And landed in front of a monster.

It had antlers like a deer—wide but thin and pointed at the top—thick, white fangs that dripped blood from its last meal, and crooked, bipedal legs. Skin was pulled tightly over numerous ribs, giving it a wasted away appearance, but thick, jagged claws that dragged low to the ground, digging in deep gouges into the earth.

Dipper and Mabel saw the woman from before, the ghost they had met in the woods, standing behind the wolf, a shotgun in her hands.

It made no noise when it fired, but the bullet ripped through the beast’s shoulder and it roared silently as blood splattered across the grass. The woman’s mouth was moving, but whatever she shouted was swallowed up by magic.

Everything else in the memory they had seen, heard, smelt, or touched. It had been everything that the wolf had experienced, transferred to them so they, too, could see the world as he had. But now, with magic dampening every sense they had, it was almost suffocating in silence.

There was no sounds and no smells. All the night creatures were covered by a blanket, smothered beneath unnatural means.

“The Silence,” Mabel whispered and, without any noise coming from the fight, it was like a crack of thunder. “It’s a magic that allows a hunter to make no sound while feeding or hunting.” She sounded like she was quoting something from a book.

In front of them, the hunter ran out of bullets and the monster continued to move forward, mouth opening wide like a snake’s as if to swallow her whole. It either didn’t see the werewolf, or deemed it unimportant, but Dipper lunged forward, tearing at the thin flesh with his claws, biting down on bone and muscle.

Nothing made a sound. Not the claws as they tore through the wolf’s side nor the tree that cracked when Dipper’s body slammed into it. Blood was smeared down the werewolf’s front, coating and matting his beautiful fur as he lunged again and again, nipping at the beast’s legs, tugging it back and away from the woman.

It was a fight made of pure desperation, for the creature followed the woman with its dark eyes, only retaliating against Dipper when the wolf became more annoying than a fly.

Mabel turned away when a clawed hand wrapped around the werewolf and threw the smaller creature through the trees, into a mess of bones. The forced scattered them around the clearing—the skull upside down and by the boulder, ribcage off to the side. Whining silently, the wolf tried to get back up and only collapsed upon the ground, legs refusing to support his weight as the wounds slowly began to close.

In the sky, the moon was setting.

Dipper watched the monster—for it was a monster—grab the woman as she tried to run. Claws pierced her sides like meat hooks, spilling blood down the front of the creature as it opened its mouth revealing rows upon rows of teeth.

It ate like a crocodile and a snake—grabbing and tearing bits off and swallowing them whole while the woman was still alive. Dipper couldn’t hear her screams—magic, Mabel had said—but he watched as the light faded from her eyes until they, too, vanished down the creature’s throat.

“Oh my God” his sister choked out. “Oh my _God_.”

Dipper wrapped one arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close and turning away, holding her to his chest and blocking out the blood ridden scene.

A whine caught their attention and the twins turned. Whatever had created the silence had broken the spell and they watched as the memory wolf looked up towards the sky where the moon finally set behind the cliffs and trees. The monster was already gone as the wolf began to change.

As the fur vanished, the blood stayed, coating the front of Dipper’s body. Naked and crouched in the middle of the trees, the twelve year old finished the transformation and looked up at the sky. Most of the wounds had been closed during the change, and only a small amount of cuts and bruises were left behind.

Dipper watched as the wolf dressed himself, the clothing still tattered, but not fully ruined, took one step, and collapsed.

The sky was swallowed into darkness that looked like ink, surrounding the twins and spitting them back out into the mindscape. Mabel grunted, sliding a bit along the ground as Dipper rolled to a stop, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. Gasping, the witch scrambled onto her hands and knees before vomiting on the roots of a pine.

Managing to get to his feet, Dipper approached her and paused when the wolf pressed its nose against her neck and licked her cheek.

“The sun is rising,” it said and looked up at Dipper. “And you must rest.”

“Yeah,” the teenager murmured. “Yes, right.” Leaning down, he urged the mess to go away (sighing in relief when it did). “Mabel,” he said gently. “Mabel, I have to pick you up, okay?” Waiting until she nodded, the werewolf slowly positioned the witch so he could lift her up into his arms. Her head rested against his shoulder, one hand grasping his shirt.

The wolf licked the hand that was hanging and ducked underneath it so it rested upon the soft fur of its forehead. “I will show you the way out,” it said, voice soft. “And I hope you saw what you needed to.”

“I did,” Dipper said, following his other self through the greyscale woods. He hadn’t killed the woman, but it brought up other questions. What was that creature that had eaten her? Why were there already bones in that clearing before he had showed up?

Whatever it was hadn’t been a werewolf. Hadn’t even been close to a werewolf. Dipper knew of no creatures that could eat a person as easily as that thing had. Perhaps it was  fae?

Shaking his head, the boy continued to walk and watched the trees turn back into walls, the bookshelves line up in even, perfect rows. Wild and civilized. He had to grin a bit at that. Leading them easily between the memories, the wolf took them out the doors, down the stairs, past the two wolves guarding the entrance, and upon the grass that marked the entrance to the mindscape.

“I will leave you here,” it said and, because wolves were never drawn to dramatic goodbyes—and this wouldn’t be a goodbye—it merely bowed its head, turned, and headed back inside.

“Okay,” Dipper murmured, looking around at the landscape. “I don’t, actually, know how to get out of here.”

Mabel’s hand tightened on his shirt—

And Dipper opened his eyes to blazing sunlight.

“Argh!” He blocked it out with an arm, blinking the dots out of his vision. It had become day during their time in the dreamscape and his bones were not happy being left lying on the ground for hours on end. “Really?!”

His sister gave a weak giggle and Dipper opened his eyes. Mabel was leaning against a tree. Her skin was pale and slightly green, long inhales and exhales keeping the urge to throw up at bay. Dipper had seen animals be ripped apart. He had seen _people_ ripped apart.

With a wince, he got to his feet. “Mint helps,” the werewolf said. “It’ll calm your stomach.”

“I’m alright,” Mabel said. “Or I will be.”

 _Truth_.

“Okay,” her brother said, not fully believing her but she believed herself. Instead, he offered a hand and she took it. “Back to the shack?”

“Yes,” she murmured, swaying slightly but heading forward. About halfway back to the Mystery Shack, Mabel had steadied. By the time the reached the parking lot, she could easily walk on her own, but still leaned up against her brother. A few cars were scattered about, some tourists were gathered to take the tour, but the twins moved past all of them, heading upstairs to collapse on the beds in the attic.

In seconds, they were asleep.

oOo

_A sword flashing through the air, slicing through flesh and earth._

_“It’s coming Shooting Star! You’re running out of time!”_

_Flames sparked in the darkness, swirling and encasing a ring of magic._

_“Hcuot ton od hcuot ton od hcuot ton od hcuot ton od hcuot ton od!”_

oOo

 Dipper’s eyes snapped open. The sun had been blocked by two thick curtains and he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes while sitting up. Mabel was still dozing away, her face blocked by a cascade of hair. She must’ve gotten up at some point—long enough to change into a pair of boxer shorts and loose fitting shirt. The tiger stuffed animal was still crushed underneath her arm, orange and black stripes having faded over the past couple of years.

Yawning, the werewolf got up and changed out of his own clothes, finding something fresher to clean than the sweat dried shirt and jeans. When he stomach growled, the teen headed downstairs towards the kitchen and dug around for some cereal.

Grunkle Ford was there, frowning as he patched something together on the table. “Afternoon, Dipper,” he said, looking up briefly before going back to... was that a gun?

“Hey,” Dipper grunted, set his bowl, cereal, and milk down and yawned. He was halfway through his second helping when Mabel came down.

Her hair was a mess, shoulders drooping, and looked like she could spend a few hours in a bath, but she settled down (setting a folded up piece of paper on the table while she was at it), grabbed her own bowl, and poured herself a pile of fruity pebbles.

“You look like you fought a bear,” Ford told her with a grin.

The witch pointed her spoon at him and narrowed her eyes. “Maybe I did,” Mabel said and promptly took a bite. “Do you know what this is?” She pushed the paper over to him and Ford set down his screw driver and opened the note.

Dipper leaned over to see and saw a hastily sketched fanged mouth and antlers before jerking away.

“Hmmm,” Ford rubbed his chin. “It doesn’t look familiar but new creatures are moving to Gravity Falls all the time.”

And then. _And then_ , Grunkle Ford reached into the small bag he had by his feet and pulled out a familiar maroon journal with a gold, six fingered hand on the front. There was a number four drawn on this one, and it certainly looked more new than the tattered one Dipper had been keeping over the past couple of years.

“Do you mind if I keep this?” Ford turned to Mabel, holding up her drawing. “I can do some research if you want, see if there are other people who’ve seen it.”

The witch nodded. “Yes, yes, of course!” She said and turned to say something to Dipper and paused. “Oh. _Oh_. Right.”

“ _You’re_ the author of the journals?” Dipper managed, his voice higher than normal.

“Well, yes!” Ford flipped through the pages of the newest one and grinned at his nephew. The expression faltered when the werewolf just stared at him, spoon hanging out of his hand, jaw dropped wide enough that a bear could hibernate in there for the winter. “What wrong?”

Mabel sighed. “I guess we should tell you the story of how Soos and I found out that Grunkle Stan had a twin brother.”

The three of them settled in an uncomfortable silence made even more so by the heat and humidity. Granted, it hadn’t risen above seventy outside, but the sun made everything feel ten times hotter.

“Yes,” Dipper said finally, choked up a bit and trying to clear out his throat. “I think you ought to.”

 


	5. Bad Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Blood, graphic depictions of violence, non-consent (non-graphic), underage (non-graphic)

“So  _Stanford_  was the one who originally built the shack to do research in Gravity Falls but he and  _Stanley_  got into a fight that knocked him into the portal leaving the person that we know as Grunkle Stan to repair the portal,” Dipper managed, stepping over a fallen pine tree.

“Yes,” Mabel spoke around a hair tie between her teeth, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she positioned her hair on top of her head. With some quick motions of her hands, there was a messy bun sitting there, strands sticking out in every direction.

The werewolf sighed and dragged his hands down his face. “So he just lives in the basement? Where does he sleep? Where does he  _shower_?”

His sister snorted. “Like you’re one to talk about  _showering_ ,” Mabel murmured, looking over the shirt and jeans he had arrived yesterday in.  _She_  had changed out of her sleep clothes halfway through Grunkle Ford’s explanation and grabbing a pair of jeans that looked as if they had seen better days with various rips across the knees and thighs. Some tall, brown boots that looked comfortable enough to sleep in but sturdy enough to survive a hike through the woods had been dragged out of the closet and  a long, navy blue sweater that reached mid thigh completed the look.

There was a shooting star on the front, not unlike the one she had worn when they were kids. Dipper had stolen the old one, though; accidently packed it away with his things when he… when he had left.

The leather messenger bag was still there, bouncing at her hip and looking, for all intents and purposes, empty.

“I’m a busy guy!” Dipper said, returning to the age old excuse he always had.

Mabel sighed and shook her head, sunlight flashing off the unicorn cuffs wrapped around her ears.

They were quiet for a few more feet and the werewolf groaned. “So the author, the guy I spent half the summer when we were twelve looking for, is  _living in our basement_.” Dipper paused and frowned. “And then he sends us out to ask the gnomes for information.”

“Bigger creatures don’t always pay attention to the little ones,” Mabel pointed out. “It’s easy to ignore beings that you can step on.” She wasn’t looking at him when she spoke but there was something in her tone; a knowing that thrummed beneath her words.

 _She knew_ , Dipper realized.  _She knew what that felt like_.

Her back stiffened and she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Doesn’t stop them from being super creepy though,” Mabel murmured, but there was no way to get the chalkboard entirely blank once someone used a knife to carve on the surface.

There was a slight disgust burning in the back of his mind and the werewolf paused. The first thing he would have to deal with later. Making the gnomes learn a lesson could happen  _now_. He looked around for a hidden spot, perking up when he noticed an area closed off from the small trail he and Mabel had been following.

“I’ll be right back,” the werewolf said.

“Dipper—“ his sister reached forward as if to stop him and, he realized, she must have felt his protective anger.

Taking her bandaged hand between his, Dipper squeezed her palm with a smile. “It’ll take fifteen minutes,” he promised, waited until she nodded, and ducked through the underbrush. Shedding his shirt, pants, and underwear, the teenager took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and started the change.

It was faster than it had been when he was younger, but there was still spitting agony of his body ripping itself apart and remaking itself again. Bones cracked and groaned, his skin broke and healed, muscles revealed and hidden.

Finally standing on four paws, Dipper shook out his fur, sneezed as his brain got used to the heightened amount of information and gathered up his clothes. Mabel was sitting against a tree, her forehead on her knees, hands pressed against her ears. Her bag was leaning against her ribs and the wolf placed the collection of fabrics on it and pressed his nose to the back of her neck.

“AH!” The witch lurched, knocking her head against his nose and pulling away. “Don’t  _do_  that!”

He wagged his thick, bushy tail and licked her cheek.

“Gross,” Mabel muttered, picking up his shirt and wiping off the slobber. She eyed the clothes, sighed, and folded them up to shove in her bag. “Such a mess,” the witch said, reaching out to ruffle his ears. Dipper paused under her hand triggering his sister to freeze.

It like coaxing a frightened fawn out from the bushes, but Mabel had always been more comfortable around animals. Despite the big teeth and size, that’s exactly what a werewolf was.

Dipper pushed upwards, his movements slow and careful, wanted to get petted but not wanting to startle her into bolting.

The  witch hesitated, holding her breath before scratched him a few times behind the ears. Giving him one last pat, she leaned down to pick up and fold the clothes with harsh, jerky movements that didn’t do much to hide her shaking hands.. Mabel placed them in her bag and smoothed down the fabric. One of the side pockets were open a bit and he saw something hollow and black sticking out from the top. It looked like a mouthpiece to a whistle but was quickly hidden underneath the leather flap.

Hoisting the leather over her shoulder, Mabel adjusted the strap going across her chest, grabbed and let go of the charm resting above her chest, and turned to face the woods as if nothing had happened.

“We should go,” she said, as if trying to convince herself, inhaled, and took a step through the trees, then another and another.

Dipper padded behind her, keeping his head low to create the illusion that he wasn’t all that big. It didn’t really help—his head was just about level with hers and their eyes could meet easily if he just lifted his neck a bit. Magic turned a one hundred-eighty pound teenager to a two hundred fifty pound wolf.

Logic couldn’t really explain  _that_.

With each minute they got closer to the gnome civilization, the tension in Mabel’s shoulders began to relax. She wasn’t fully comfortable, but she didn’t look like a coiled bit of copper pressed under the thumb of a third grader getting ready to launch it across the room. He sped up just a tad so they were side by side

His sister lowered a hand so it just barely brushed the tips of his hair before burying into his ruff. They passed through the border at some point; the towering trees turning into lush greenery, fungus, moss, and bright red mushrooms.

“Okay,” Mabel murmured, straightening her back and keeping her arms firmly at her sides. “It’s just a few questions, nothing wrong with that.”

Dipper huffed in agreement and she stepped past the bushes into the clearing.

There were gnomes spilled about; climbing the trees, playing some sort of hopscotch, and they all froze when they noticed the witch suddenly in their midst.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Mabel Pines,” Jeff the gnome came out from behind some trees. He didn’t look any different—perhaps gnomes were a long lived race. Dipper wasn’t quite sure on that. Perhaps they were all born with beards so even baby gnomes looked like adult gnomes and they didn’t actually age, just fell over dead.

Like cockroaches.

The werewolf narrowed his eyes at the thought.

“No! Ew!”

Repulsion and unease pulsed through him and Dipper focused on his sister. She held the strap of her bag tightly between her hands, her shoulders hunched, eyes flickering over Jeff and back into the trees. The werewolf slunk out of the undergrowth, padding across the soft ground and circling so he was behind the small creature.

“No deal, then!” Jeff was saying, too smug for his own good. His hands were on his hips as he leered up at her. “We don’t want to be known as the  _witch_  sympathisers anyways!”

Dipper leaned down so his nose was behind the gnome’s and huffed like a horse.  _Blow their house down_ , he thought as the little pervert turned around. Opening his mouth, the wolf made sure that the other creature got a good view of his incredibly long, sharp teeth and Jeff scrambled backwards with a yelp, falling back on Mabel’s feet.

 _Go for it_ , the werewolf aimed at the witch as she took a shuddering breath, straightened, and pushed aside her unease to leave a young, strong woman in her place.  

“Look, Jeff,” she said, resting her hands on her hips. “We only want to ask some questions.”

The gnome tried to take off between her legs, but Dipper caught him with a paw, trapping him like a cat would a mouse.

“Fine!” Jeff screamed from underneath the werewolf’s foot. “What do you want?!” He got a bit squeakier with each word, the terror flowing off of him in waves.

“Do you know what’s been eating humans?”

The gnome inhaled and paused.

Dipper growled low in the back of his throat.

“No!” Jeff grabbed at the ground to pull himself out from under the heavy limb holding him down. “No one does!”

Mabel frowned and Dipper batted the little man between his paws, wagging his tail like a puppy with a new squeaky toy. “What about where it lives?” The witch definitely didn’t grin as her brother scooped Jeff up with his nose and tossed him into the air like a sea lion would a ball.  _She didn’t_.

“South! Close to the old caves!” Between his screaming and cursing, Jeff managed to scratch out at Dipper with his hands, forcing the werewolf to lean back in order to avoid losing an eye. Bouncing on the moss, the gnome scrambled to his feet and hissed at the taller magical being.

When Dipper snarled in return, it made the very roots of the trees rumble.

The gnomes scrambled back into the trees at the sound, crawling over each other like ants to get away, leaving the clearing with just the twins standing in it. Sitting back on his haunches, Dipper looked up at his sister.

“Old caves?” The witch murmured and pulled her bag forward, flipping over the flap and looking through some of the pockets. There was that odd, thin cylinder with the mouthpiece again, but she moved past that, grabbing a folded up map from one of the pockets. She smoothed it out over the grass and moss, pressing down on the creases until it was as flat as it would get.

Someone had taken a map of Gravity Falls and had written all over the paper, drawing and marking things that weren’t normally on it. The bunker was there, something about a village of mole people, and… yes,  _there_.

“The old caves,” Mabel said, tracing a finger from the gnome town to the drawings along the cliffs.  

They saw no gnomes as they walked out of the village, but Dipper smelled them hiding up in the trees. The green gave way back to the normal forest, Mabel holding her map in one hand and looking up at the sky to trace their destination. Soon, the sun would set, but not for a couple of hours.

Dipper followed his sister, keeping his ears perked and searching for silence.

“I guess we can’t really talk with you like that,” Mabel said, breaking the peace that had settled between them.

The werewolf sneezed and shook out his fur. He could send her emotions, maybe images if he really needed to. Telepathic communication, though? That wasn’t going to happen.

“Thought so,” she said softly, left hand rubbing along her right. He wondered if the scabs itched. It the bandages felt sweltering under the sweater or if they were just…  _there_. Like an annoyance she touched absently but had gotten used to. Dipper brushed her hip with his side and wagged his tail when she looked down at him.

Mabel settled a hand gently on his head between his ears, brushing the smooth fur carefully. “It’s a lot easier to talk to you when you’re all fluffy,” she admitted.

Dipper huffed and pressed his ears back, giving her the most scandalized look a wolf would manage.

With a giggle, she rubbed his cheeks in that way dog lovers made their pet’s ears flap around. “I haven’t been very good at talking with people for a while,” The witch admitted, pressing their foreheads together with a sigh. Dipper wiggled closer and rested his chin on her shoulder.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Mabel took a few deep breaths then pulled back. “Thank you,” she said.

With a woof, Dipper pressed against her back, urging her onward and stepped up beside her again.

“Have werewolves ever considered going into animal therapy?” Mabel didn’t rest her arm on him, but she didn’t pull away either. “You look a lot more friendly when you’re all fur and fang.”

Dipper shot her a look. Not many people would describe a werewolf in its wolf form  _friendly_. But, then again, Mabel had been totally okay with dating a fish man.

“I bet werewolves make great vets,” she murmured, seemingly talking to herself.

Shaking his head, Dipper opened his mouth to show off his fangs.

The witch frowned and it took a few seconds before she actually got it. “Yeah,” she hummed. “I suppose the smaller ones  _would_  be scared.” Pausing, Mabel tapped her chin and the sweater sleeve dropped down to show the bandages wrapped around her forearm. “What about dogs?”

Pausing, Dipper thought it over. There had been werewolves in Montana who raised dogs. One in particular bred giant Caucasian Mountain dogs that were just big enough to explain the various tracks during the hunting season. Very few werewolves had small enough paws to range in the wolf category, and they would never be mistaken for something like a mastiff, but having the dogs there had helped a bit.

None of the dogs seemed to have any problem with werewolves. Dipper huffed and relaxed, letting his tail sway back and forth.

“Oh,” Mabel frowned slightly, sorting through the emotions to make sense of them. “So dogs are okay. What about cats?”

Ears flat against his skull, Dipper shook his head. Cats  _hated_ werewolves.

The witch laughed. “No cats then,” she grinned and looked over him with a critical eye. “You know, if I got you a collar you might look like a wolf-dog hybrid.”

It was against the werewolves’ laws to run around alone without a collar. Dipper had gotten one a few years ago. Alexander, the head of all werewolves, had given it to him before he had left the alpha’s territory.

There was no way to tell his sister that, though he tried through the bond and her brow furrowed. “I…” she paused and it took her a few minutes to figure out the emotions. “You… already have one?” Mabel said at last, not very sure of her answer.

Dipper barked and her expression relaxed and brightened.

“I’m guessing it’s back at the shack,” she mused and they walked through two trees that had the branches intertwined. Dipper sneezed as something thick like humidity—that sticky type of feeling when someone is taking a really hot shower and you walk into the bathroom—settled upon him. His ears buzzed, then popped, and he opened and closed his mouth to get rid of the odd feeling.

Mabel paused and frowned, looking back and forth, stepped back through the trees, and rubbed her hands together. “That’s weird,” she murmured, snapped her fingers, and lit a little ball of flame above her nails. It flickered jack-o-lantern orange for a moment, then blazed purple, swallowed itself, and vanished with a puff.  

She pulled the messenger bag forward and opened the flap as something rustled in the trees.

Dipper glanced up—

And the world fell out from underneath them.

He woke up in a cage. One of those large, outdoor dog kennels with the thin, steel screening and tall poles. It was just barely long enough for him to stretch out his full length, and the tips of his tail hairs were just about brushing the wire. A dull buzzing came from it and, when his side accidently touched the side, a shock went through him.

The werewolf jumped away, pressing himself down in the middle of the kennel, legs tense to spring as he took in… where ever they were. It looked to be a basement with waxed wooden floors and towering (cement?) walls with nothing on them. A naked bulb hung above, swinging back and forth on a wire and making the shadows dance. In the corner, laying against the wall as if it had been thrown there, was his sister’s messenger bag.

If it hadn’t been right above him, Dipper might have seen her sooner.

Mabel was sprawled across the floor, just outside the circle of light. She had her back to him, brown hair spilled like ink down her back and across the wood. Her ribs rose and fell, the sweatshirt straightening and creasing with each of the motions, so she was alive. The werewolf breathed in and focused.

The thump of her heartbeat filled him, and Dipper relaxed. Their bond was fizzing like a VHS that ran out of tape but was still in the VCR, yet the werewolf didn’t worry. Neither of them had gone unconscious under normal means.

He was more concerned about his senses. Mabel had called whatever that creature had done the Silence, but he could hear her heart beat, smell the dust across the floor and the iron in the door. But it was limited to this room, beyond that there was nothing.

Shaking himself out, the wolf examined the kennel. It was held in by flimsy clasps, but… Dipper threw himself at the side and jerked as magic shocked through him again. They were held there by other means. Gravity didn’t make a difference when magic was involved.

Mabel groaned and Dipper turned to her, lowering himself so he sat like a sphinx, and whined. The bond was clearing up and he made sure to ooze comfort and peace.

There was a clinking as she moved, like metal against the floor, and he tilted his head to the side.

“Everything hurts,” his sister grunted, sitting up and reaching to rub at her head. Her arm was stopped by a chain that grounded her to the floor. “What—”

The heavy door slammed open, but there was no light on the other side. Above them, the bulb swung back and forth and Dipper snarled as the smell of blood, copper, and meat filled the room.

A woman walked in, her long, dark hair hidden underneath a yellow and green spotted bandana. She was wearing more brown, leather pants and a loose, white shirt that wouldn’t look out of place in a pirate movie. Three or four belts were wrapped around her waist, small objects dangled and clinked with each step, and her black skin blended into the shadows that flickered, giving her the impression of being able to move from place to place without actually walking. It was that odd, strobe like effect that made people look far from inhuman, and Dipper snarled.

She hissed at him, showing off white teeth and delicately pointed canines. They looked more fragile than his, but the werewolf knew they were just as sharp.

 _Vampire_.

Dipper hadn’t been fully aware that Gravity Falls even had a vampire population. Five years ago, he thought Mabel had been  _joking_.

Seems like she had met one after all.

This creature walked past his kennel towards his sister and Dipper threw himself at the side of the cage again. Mabel looked up, but the vampire didn’t flinch.

“It’s been a long time since a witch has come to our seethe,” she said, kneeling down before the teenager. A dark thumb brushed against the witch’s pale cheek and held her still even as she tried to jerk away. “Why have you come?”

“We didn’t know this was your territory,” Mabel said, avoiding the vampire’s gaze, keeping her eyes on Dipper. “We were looking for a monster.”

“A monster?” The vampire leaned back with a frown. “Some might say _I_  am a monster.”

The werewolf snarled. Wolves could control themselves, they didn’t eat humans.

That was all a vampire fed on.

She smiled at him, showing those sharp fangs once more.

“Not you,” Mabel said, either ignoring the exchange or not noticing. “It is big—bigger than a bear—and ate half a woman yesterday.”

Tilting her head to the side, the vampire frowned. “That  _is_ interesting,” she murmured, but there was hunger in her gaze as she looked over Mabel. “But, it has eaten only humans, what do I care for them?” Her hands cupped the teenager’s cheeks. “What use is a monster when you can have a  _witch_?”

Dipper snarled and lunged again, snapping his long, sharp teeth. His claws dug deep gouges into the floor of the kennel, scraping and screeching like a sword against stone.  _She is mine!_  His wolf howled. _She is ours!_

Mabel jerked and her eyes widened as she glanced at him. Witches had lost the war years ago, he remembered that lesson. A few had caused enough destruction over a hundred years that magic almost became known to the humans. Only the distractions caused by the world wars had kept the community safe. A council was born from the ashes and witches were given less rights than a slave in the sixteen hundreds.

The vampire had the right to claim an unprocessed witch.

His wolf did not agree with that law.

His wolf was also currently trapped behind a wall of magic. The vampire tilted his sister’s face upwards, forcing their eyes to meet. With werewolves, staring into the eyes of another was a dominance game to figure out who was the biggest, baddest wolf. It stopped numerous fights and gave them an easy hierarchy to follow.

With vampires, it gave them the power to enthral their victims.

Mabel shuddered and flinched, trying to look away but was pulled back to the piercing stare. She wrapped her hands around the vampire’s wrists as if trying to pull them away, but her grip slackened, loosened, until her hands fell back to the floor with a thump.

Her heartbeat slowed, eyes drooping to half mast while hands moved over her face, brushing over her neck, and dug into her hair. Each touch was soft and rough, brushing skin against skin with just a whisper of movement.

“There you go,” the vampire murmured, eyes flashing like a cat’s in the dark, gleaming red as she pulled the witch’s head side to the side. “Give in, little witch.” Swooping in, she wrapped one hand around the witch’s neck and captured Mabel’s lips, kissing the teenager brutally enough to bruise. A rough bite had blood trickling down their chins, dripping down on the floor.

The silver necklace holding the anchor charm gleamed in the dim light like a warning sign.

 _MABEL!_  Dipper watched his sister lurch forward, eyes glazed and staring straight ahead when the vampire leaned back, licking her lips. Brown eyes were glassy like a fish’s and his sister’s mouth was open, jaw slack though no air seemed to be leaving or entering. The werewolf whined and lunged forward, slamming his side against the bars of the kennel.

Under normal conditions, the steel would have bent like melting ice cream.

Supported by magic, it didn’t move.

The pack bond was unwinding and twisting again, like someone was trying to cut it and another was rapidly tying those ends back together again. In the back of Dipper’s mind, his wolf howled, rage and mourning filling him as his heart pumped red hot blood to every artery in his body.

Kill, he would kill them all.  _How DARE they?!_  Ignoring the way his flesh sizzled and burned, Dipper latched his fangs around the door of the kennel and pulled back as hard as he could. He might as well have been trying to push a mountain for all his efforts worked.

Each breath was like that of a racehorse’s; thunderous and echoing in the room. It was fuelled by his anger, his worry, his hatred.

The werewolf prepared to lunge again, one last desperate attempt as the bond was strained like a rubber band stretched too far, and something burst. White light flooded the room, slicing at the shadows as the vampire screeched and lumped backwards, faster than the eye could see, and was braced against one of the walls.

Mabel fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. She blinked and groaned, curling in on herself with a shudder. Huffing, Dipper got as close as he could get to the kennel walls without being shocked, lowered his head to the floor, and barked.

The bond was remaking itself again, tightening around them.

“How  _dare_  you!” The vampire snarled, her eyes still glowing as the witch managed to get on her hands and knees. “You would see fit to break the laws?”

Dipper watched as his sister reached up, wiped the blood from her open mouth, and closed her hand around the anchor. A deep, hungry presence grew in the room and it was  _old_.

Old and wise and  _angry_.

“The laws are  _stupid_ ,” Mabel snapped and she ripped the charm off her neck. Red oozed from between her fingers, but whether it was from the points on the charm piercing her skin or the blood she had wiped from her mouth, the werewolf couldn’t tell.

It had been that little piece of jewellery, Dipper realized, that had thrown the vampire away. That small bit of metal that could easily be a choking hazard for a three year old.

Mabel’s knuckles turned white around it and she breathed in deeply and heavily. “I will be no one’s slave,” she hissed.

“Yeah, kiddo?” The vampire was inching closer, wary of the magic that was swirling into deadly storm clouds. “What’re you going to do about it?”

Mabel smiled. “I don’t have to do anything,” she said and, before the dark creature could do anything, she threw the charm. It arched through the air, a glimmer of silver, gold, and black before the metal and stones twisted and grew. One end became a long, steel point and the other rounded out, smoothed down, and twisted to an ivory handle.

The dagger sliced through the lock on the kennel as if it was butter and the buzzing magic sputtered and died. Dipper lunged forward and crashed through the metal like a battering ram. Thin wire netting bent open before him as if it was made of nothing more than blades of grass. He shook the smaller pieces off his fur coat, prowled underneath the light of the swinging bulb, and stopped before his sister.

There was hesitation in the vampire’s face, flickering through her eyes.

Dipper opened his mouth and  _roared_. She had committed an unforgivable sin against a pack mate and, by the realization dawning on her face, the vampire understood. There would never be an apology from her, not a vampire.

 _Rip her apart,_  the wolf snarled and Dipper braced himself before the two of them clashed together. His claws ripped through already dead flesh, his teeth snapping through bone as her claws raked down his sides, drawing blood but not doing enough damage to even slow him down.

Out of the corner of his eye, the werewolf saw that Mabel had gotten a hold of her bag and was digging through it, pulling out the strange object he had seen earlier. She put it up to her mouth and breathed in, eyes flashing purple before she pulled it away and blew thick white smoke across her shackles.

What were they called, a vape pen?

The shackles turned to sand, landing on the floor in little piles.

Dipper grunted as the vampire braced her feet against his stomach and launched him over her head. He hit the far wall and scrambled to get back up on his feet as she crossed the room in three, quick steps—

The door slammed open again just as she reached Mabel who had been taking a second long inhale from the small vape pen. Another vampire stood there, a second woman with her black hair braided back behind her head with skin a light brown. “Saira!”

Mabel exhaled and the smoke formed a shield in front of her, the first vampire—Saira—punching through it to grab the witch. The smell of burnt bacon slit through the air, the white cloud burning along the vampire’s skin until there were thick blisters the size of fists spotted along the flesh.

With a howl, the vampire lurched back, holding her injured arm close to her body.

“I came to see how goes the witch taming,” the second vampire said dryly, stepping fully into the room so they could see the long, red dress she was wearing. It looked, well, it looked like a ball gown. Maybe vampires never changed out of their old clothes once they had been turned. It wasn’t as if they had to worry about sweat. “But it seems it’s not going as well as we had hoped.”

“She had a few tricks,” Saira said with a voice as close to admiration as a vampire could get.  It was begrudging. Yes,  _begrudging_. “I apologize, Apasia.” The cloud of smoke had vanished and she shoved Mabel back, hard enough to send her sprawling across the floor. Kicking the vape pen out of the witch’s hand, the vampire stepped down on the teenager’s wrist, holding her in place.

Mabel yelped, her free hand wrapping around the bloodless ankle.

Dipper snarled, stepping towards them, and found his way blocked by the woman in the ball gown. “Get back, wolf,” she said. “This doesn’t—”

He didn’t care about  _her_.

 _Her_  words meant  _nothing._

Running forward, Dipper lowered his head like a goat and rammed into her stomach. If she had needed to breathe, it would have knocked the air right out of her lungs. But seeing as dead bodies don’t, exactly, need air,  he just slammed her into the other vampire and sent them sprawling.

They were fast and strong but he was  _furious_. Baring his teeth, Dipper snarled and stepped over Mabel. She was trying to sit up, holding her left side and groaning. No broken bones, though, and her breathing was laboured but not whistling. Just bruises, then.

He licked her cheek.

“That’s still gross,” the witch said, pushing his face away and managing to get back up to her feet.

“Touching,” Apasia said, not mockingly, but as if she was wondering if that was how affection was supposed to feel. Vampires were a bit skewed, not being human anymore. She lunged forward and Dipper returned the favour with relish.

He couldn’t kill them. Not without a stake, some fire, and maybe a good slice to the neck. But he could break them. Saira moved around him to confront Mabel, smiling with all of her teeth and stalking low like a big cat playing with its prey.

She took a swipe at the witch and Mabel stumbled backwards. Taking in a deep breath, the teenager raised her hand to the ceiling. “Carnwennan!”

The dagger ripped itself out of the floor of the kennel, threw itself across the room, and landed in her hand as a broadsword. Red leather wrapped around the handle, a small anchor embedded on the hand guard. Dipper and Apasia stopped their fight to stare.

Claws ripped through the fabric of Mabel’s sweater like it was made of flimsy paper rather than wool, tearing the shooting star on the front to fourths. Mabel jumped back, the clothing hanging loosely around her body, and sneered at the vampire.

“Sorry  _sweetheart_ ,” Saira said, smirking just enough to reveal a bit of fang. Her gaze flickered to the sword in the witch’s hands, though. It wasn’t very often that people got their hands on old, magical objects.

And this was an  _old_  magical object.

Mabel gritted her teeth, grabbed the bottom of the sweater, and ripped it the rest of the way. She pulled it off, holding the bit of limp fabric in her hand, and set a spark to the bottom. The wool burned, a flame flickering to life and swallowing the shooting star while the witch tossed it to the side.

There would be nothing left but ashes.

Lowering Carnwennan, Mabel admired how the light gleamed across the surface, reflecting to illuminate the red and white striped tank top with a large, black anchor stretching from her chest to hips. Humming in her hand, the sword was hungry and angry.

The vampire moved too fast for her eyes, but there was the predator and prey instinct, the knowledge of where something would strike. A deep, hunter green bled into the witch’s eyes as Saira lunged forward. She was fast.

Carnwennan was faster.

Claws scraped across the shield, doing no more damage than a fly to a semi.

Vampire and witch, they moved together and apart, Carnwennan always between them. A shadow grow out from Mabel—a man—that echoed each of her steps, blocks, and twists. Or, perhaps, she followed him. Dipper saw a flash of steel, the curl of a red dragon, and Saira snarled, unable to get close.

Apasia rammed into the werewolf and his claws ripped through the floor as he fought to keep his feet, closed his jaws over her forearm, and slammed her up against the wall. It broke beneath them, the vampire and werewolf rolling across dirt underneath pine trees.

The sun was still in the sky, just barely, and the light washed over the dead flesh.

A scream tore through Apasia’s throat and she clawed her way back to the shadows—until Dipper placed one foot on her back, keeping her in place. She turned to dust underneath him, roasted alive by the sun. Clanging came from inside the building, Saira and Mabel still at a stalemate until the werewolf jumped back through the hole and slammed into the vampire.

He kept his teeth close to her neck, snapping them when she tried to get back up.

Saira froze.

Mabel wiped the sweat out of her eyes, her bun a mess and partially falling out, bangs sticking to her forehead and cheeks. But she lowered Carnwennan so the tip of the blade was pointed at the vampire’s face. “What’s killing the humans,” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” the vampire snapped.

 _Lie_.

Dipper grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her towards the beam of sunlight coming through the hole. Saira screeched and claws at his neck and legs, but the werewolf didn’t stop.

“Okay, okay!” She snapped. “We don’t know the name of it but it was human, okay?  _It was human._ ”

“What do you mean?” Mabel frowned.

The vampire sneered.

Dipper took another step.

“Vampires can smell human blood,” she spat out quickly. “And it has human blood.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mabel pulled away, her words more directed at herself than the vampire. “It doesn’t feel like a human, like the soul is gone…”

Saria scowled. “That’s nice,” The vampire snapped. “Now tell the mutt to let go of me.”

Looking back at Dipper, the teenager shrugged and he unlocked his jaw, releasing the vampire’s arm. But both he and his wolf watched her with golden eyes. Carnwennan watched, too, as she rubbed where his teeth had punctured the skin.

The shadow of the man was still there; a tall, blonde figure with armour like a knight’s. He seemed to become more solid for a moment, long enough that the werewolf could make out the golden dragon on his flowing red cape… and he was gone.

Saria bared her fangs and glanced at Mabel, her eyes still hungry as they moved up and down the witch’s figure.

Dipper bolted forward the moment she wasn’t looking at him, bit down on her spine, and snapped her neck.

Mabel flinched back at the sound of bone breaking and watched, eyes wide, as he dragged the vampire’s body out of the shadows and into the sunlight. It burned like the other one, turning into dust within seconds.

“Why did you do that?” The witch whispered.

Looking over his shoulder, Dipper stared, unblinking, with gold eyes. Wolf eyes. Had Saira gone back to her seethe she would have told them about Mabel. About an unclaimed witch and they would have hunted her down. But this… this was far more personal.

He padded towards his sister, pressed his forehead against her stomach. The black print of the anchor stuck to his fur as he nudged her back until she was rubbing her fingers through his fur.

 _Because she hurt you_.

Carnwennan hit the ground with a clang and Mabel wrapped her arms around her brother’s neck, buried her face in his fur, and didn’t bother holding back the sobs that shook her body.

 


	6. Chaos

Eventually, Dipper and Mabel managed to get down on the floor. The witch had laid halfway on her brother, head rising and falling with each of his breaths, looking with half mast eyes at the ceiling, right hand wrapped around the handle of Carnwennan—which had turned back into a dagger at some point. Partially curled up around her, the werewolf managed to twist just enough to lay his head comfortably on her lap, eyes closed as she absentmindedly scratched behind his ears.

The light coming through the hole in the wall was getting dimmer by the minute, night approaching Gravity Falls. They couldn’t stay here, but neither wanted to put up much of an effort to move.

There was a rustling in the grass and Dipper opened one eye, looking at the hole.

A coyote stood in the opening, watching them with far too intelligent brown eyes. It walked into the building, taking in the broken kennel, the blood on the floor, and the heavy door that laid open, leading into the darkness. Black claws clicked against the ground and Mabel twitched before focusing on the small canine.

Giving them a doggy smile, it paused, wagged its tail, and then walked through the open doorway. Dipper lifted his head to watch it go, waiting until the buckskin tail vanished from sight before nudging Mabel with his nose.

They should go. He didn’t know what had attracted the coyote’s attention, but he didn’t want to find out, either. Mabel sighed and stretched, back and shoulders popping, before getting up. Following her, Dipper did his own stretched to work out the kinks in his muscles, yawning wide enough to show off his great, big teeth. Blood had matted a bit of his fur, but the wounds had closed a while ago. He walked outside as she gathered up her bag and vape pen, soaking in the sunlight as it warmed his skin.

And there was nothing left of the vampires.  Both piles of dust were blown away, leaving no trace that they had even been there except for long line of smeared blood on the ground.

Mabel rested her hand on his head. “Let’s go home,” she said, voice still hoarse from the crying she had done earlier, eyes bloodshot and crusted around the edges enough that she kept rubbing at them. Using his head to push her butt forward, Dipper urged her to walk while taking up the rear guard, ears twitching back and forth, searching for signs of life.

They came upon the interwoven trees and the witch stared at them for a moment and then dragged her pinky along the bark. Above them, the branches of the trees unwound, releasing the grip on each other. Dipper felt his ears pop, the magic bubble bursting, tiny golden sparks drifting to the ground like fireflies.

Standing there, watching them, Mabel sighed. There was some melancholy to it all and the werewolf huffed and pressed to her side, urging his sister to go forward and leave all this behind. With one last look around, the witch slid Carnwennan through one of her belt loops and they began the trek back to the shack.

Monster hunting, at least for that day, was done.

Dipper was underneath her hand each time she stumbled, keeping close as she yawned. When the witch had let everything go, the werewolf had felt years of pent up emotions blaze through their bond. Anger, resentment, sorrow. She had sobbed for a while, gripping his fur until it was almost painful—not that he would ever complain. Not of that and not of her.

“We should—” Mabel started to say and was cut off pretty rudely by a yawn. Covering her mouth with her hand, her jaw cracked with the motion and her eyes blinked back tears. “Sorry,” She murmured. “We should probably clean that blood off of you.”

Looking down at his paws, Dipper winced when he realized that they were still coated in dried, flaking crimson. Out of the other sounds of the forest, he picked out the subtle rush of running water and followed it, Mabel at his side, until they came upon one of the small that flowed from the lake.

Werewolves, however, couldn’t really swim no matter how good they had been before they changed; too much muscle density had them going straight to the bottom. Dipper put one paw in and then the other, sniffing at the clear water before licking some up, drinking until he was full. Mabel settled on a nearby rock, Carnwennan in hand as he waded in far enough until the creek reached his chest. She placed her bag up against a nearby tree, settling down and leaning back while she waited.

The river didn’t get any deeper than that, so he dunked himself under, sneezing when he got back up. A giggle rose from the witch, but when Dipper looked back at her, she wasn’t looking at him. Dripping rivers, he climbed out onto shore and shook.

“Dipper!” His sister shouted, covering her face with her hands and ducking away from the small maelstrom. “What was that for?”

He wagged his tail and trotted up beside her, pressing his nose into a gap between her arms and face. She yelped—though amusement sparked through the bond— put down the dagger, and tried to push his face away.

“You smell like wet dog,” Mabel whined.

He pulled back, ears pressed against his skull. _Like hell he did_. Huffing, tail up like a show dog, Dipper trotted behind her, braced his hind legs in the dirt, and shoved her in. Her arms flailed about like windmills and she hit the water with a tremendous splash coating her and the rock she had been sitting on.

Mabel rose with a gasp, wobbling as the slick rocks beneath her feet rocked back and forth. “Dipper!” Her hair looked longer under the weight of the water, hanging heavily down her back, sticking to the tank top. The fabric was light and breezy, dyed rather than painted on so it stuck to her skin without causing much discomfort. Water and _jeans_ , on the other hand...

Okay, so he hadn’t really thought that through.

Head down, butt up, tail wagging. If you’re not sorry, you might as well have fun with it.

Dragging her hand along the surface of the water, Mabel splashed him before wringing out her hair. “That was so rude,” she muttered, keeping one eye on him as he bounded forward and back like a dog ready to play fetch.

The witch’s eyes turned purple.

Dipper yelped as the ground beneath him pushed upwards, catapulting him through the air. He landed on his side in the water, no doubt drenching his sister again, scrambled against the rocks and came up with a gasp that was dramatic enough to be featured in a music video. He turned to Mabel as she scrambled over slippery rocks, trying to get to shore again, and bounded after her.

“No, no!” She turned around, laughter in her eyes, and poked him on the nose as he scrambled to a stop. “ _Bad_ dog!”

Lowering himself, Dipper narrowed his eyes. The water lapped at his cheeks and back, but he carefully kept his nose and eyes above water.

A wolf crocodile. Crocolf.

She was walking backwards, away from him, hands out as if to brace against him when he pounced. And he _would_ pounce. “Don’t you dare, Dipper,” Mabel scowled. “Don’t you _dare_.”

He braced himself against the bottom of the river.

“ _Dipper_.”

Large paws adjusted, sinking just a little bit lower in the water as she walked slowly backwards, eyes flickering from side to side as if looking for a way out.

“Dipper!”

The werewolf pounced and Mabel lurched away, pulling herself up—

Landing in water, his sister _not_ beneath him, Dipper wuffled, confused, and looked up.

Standing on top of the water, her eyes neon and glowing, was his sister. She was crouched, one hand braced upon the surface and _not_ sinking into it. The werewolf stared, a perfect _what the hell_ expression on his face as she managed to stand upright using just her thighs and abdomen.

“Revenge,” she whispered with a smirk and raised her hands. Dipper took a step back once he caught sight of the wave rising up behind her. Taking a deep breath, he plonked his butt in the river bed, raised his head, and closed his eyes.

It was better to go to death with dignity than falling flat on his face.

The wave slammed into him, knocking him off his feet and sending him spiralling through the water. He surfaced with a gasp, still tall enough to stand in the deepest parts of the river, and blinked the water from his eyes. Mabel was sitting on the surface, hands braced against her magic and pushing down as if seeing how much weight it could take. Behind her, the sun was halfway over the cliffs, pouring golden light through the trees and illuminating her wet hair so it glowed like a halo.

Dipper waded back to her and his sister looked up, a smile on her face. She took his head in her lap and ran her fingers through the thick fur along his neck and shoulders. They must have made quite a sight with her sitting on the river, a wolf the size of a pony resting his head in her lap. Two fantasy creatures that were never meant to exist together illuminated by the setting sun.

The werewolf closed his eyes and basked in it.

When they did leave the river, Mabel whisked away the water and she stepped into the forest as dry as she had been before Dipper shoved her in. Her brother, on the other hand, was still soaking wet though not covered in blood anymore, which was a plus. She gathered up Carnwennan, who had turned back into the innocently small charm again, and her bag.

Shaking in the trees, Dipper huffed and took in the smell of the forest, letting it seep into where the river had washed it away.

The witch tapped him on the forehead and her magic settled upon him like a fine dusting of sugar before it was whisked away “There,” Mabel said, bag hanging from her shoulder, hands on her hips. “Now you don’t smell like wet dog.”

Dipper stared at her before twisting, sniffing at his fur. It didn’t smell any different to him. He turned back to her and tilted his head to the side.

Cupping his cheeks, Mabel leaned down to whisper in his ear. “You smell like cotton candy,” she told him, pulled back, and giggled.

He stared at her. _Cotton candy?_ Raising his head in pride, Dipper stalked past her and Mabel tried to smother her laughter by placing a hand over her mouth.

It didn’t exactly _work_.

They arrived at the Mystery Shack with Dipper still walking like a dog in a show and his sister trailing behind, giggling in bursts. Stan was sitting outside, waving away a last group of customers, turned, and saw his great niece first.

“What the heck happened to you?”

“Dipper pushed me in a river,” Mabel told him. “I got revenge.”

Stan took a double take and stared at the large wolf currently making himself comfortable on the porch. “ _That’s_ Dipper?”

“Yep,” Mabel popped the last letter like bubble gum.

There was a moment in which Stan just looked over the quite large canine body.

“Why does he smell like cotton candy?”

Dipper, who had been ready to rest his head on his paws and take a nap, got back up to his feet with a huff and stalked inside.

“He was a bad dog,” Mabel whispered behind him and Stan snorted.

Heading up the stairs, the werewolf closed the attic door with a foot, dug his backpack out from underneath the bed, snatched a blanket to throw over himself, and began the change. It was just as long, just as painful. Someone, Mabel probably, had stopped outside the door and seemed to be waiting.

Finishing up, Dipper laid his cheek against the floor, his damp hair sticking to his face as he panted. Reaching blindly for his back pack, he grabbed a pair of boxers and pulled them on before opening the door. “Sorry,” he croaked and cleared his throat.

It was Mabel waiting outside, but she just shook her head. “It’s okay,” the witch seemed to curl in on herself, ducking her head down and looking away. It was completely different than how she reacted around the wolf and Dipper carefully gave her the space to enter their... _her_ room.

Animals hadn’t ever really hurt her, he realized. Animals relied on instinct, they didn’t hunt unless it was for food or defence. Dipper pulled on a pair of sweatpants as she began placing all of her things in their rightful places. “If I could stay in the wolf form, I would,” he said, turning around to look at her. No matter how dangerous it was, he would do anything for her, but he walked a fine line between beast and man. A fine line other had been killed for crossing.

The witch’s shoulders stiffened.

“The wolf... the wolf form makes it easier for the other side to come forward, and if I—or any wolf—stays in that form for too long then the human mind is overcome and we lose ourselves.” Dipper took a deep breath. He couldn’t tell what she was feeling, the emotional outburst earlier and the strain on the bond seemed to have worn it thin for now. “If that happens, someone would come for me, they would have me killed.”

He had only seen it once, a wolf who had lost complete and utter control, ripping through seventeen people before another could take them down. Dipper didn’t want to become that, he didn’t want to lose himself in that way. “I know you don’t trust me like _this_ , like a human, but, Mabel, I _promise_ —“

She whirled around, crashing into him, her arms wrapping around his torso, face buried in his shoulder. Standing there in shock for a moment, Dipper felt her hair tickle his bare skin and her body shaking ever so slightly against him before he pulled her to him, one arm curled across her shoulders and his unoccupied hand cradling the back of her head. The werewolf, in turn, laid his cheek against her skull and breathed in the heavy scent of the forest, sweat, and flowers.

“You stood between me and a vampire, stupid,” Mabel whispered against him and her nails dug into his back. “How could you think I don’t trust you?”

Dipper closed his eyes. “Mabel...” He started and she held him tighter.

“Shut up,” the witch snapped, though it had lost the anger it held two days ago. “You’re gonna sit here and we’re going to hug it out.”

“Mabel—”

“ _Hug it out_.”

The werewolf huffed, but did as she ordered. Her grip was tight, but not hurtful, and he carefully strengthened his hold on her, breathing in the smells that were just his sister. When they pulled back, she turned around, going back through her bag, pulling out his clothing as Dipper just stood there, warmth spreading from his toes to his finger tips.

He shrugged on a shirt and took his dirty clothes from her to be added to the wash pile later and they both headed downstairs to dig up some food. Two transformations made a werewolf pretty unhappy, but with two pizzas in the oven and three hamburgers grilling, his stomach would be appeased.

For a while.

It was one of the major tradeoffs—strength for food, magic for sleep. A werewolf could easily become too exhausted to change back and forth without enough protein, and hunger was not the best influence on their moods.

Mabel, on the other hand, settled down with a bowl full of fruit and nuts, some tea, and six chocolate bars. Sugar and calories to make up for her use of magic. Carnwennan sat in front of her, stainless and seemingly untouched from the events of the day.

Taking his plate of hamburgers, Dipper settled across from her. “What are you going to do with it?”

The witch shrugged. “Probably make a bracelet,” she said, pushing it around the table with her nail. “Something that can easily be removed.”

Nodding, Dipper took a bite out of the meat and the wolf settled. He wondered if he should bring up the shadow of the man but, watching her shove some of the odd looking yogurt mush into her mouth, he decided to wait. There were other things, after all, that they should be worried about.

“Human blood but no soul,” he murmured. “What do you make of that?”

Mabel paused, swallowed the mouthful she had, and frowned. “Something that is part human? Like the manotaurs?”

“Can vampires _feed_ off manotaurs?”

She shrugged.

Dipper finished off one hamburger and started on the next, chewing with a bit more force than necessary, his brow furrowed. “Something with human blood but no soul, it’s like one of those old riddles.”

“Could be a vampire,” Mabel pointed out. “Vampire cross thing?” She paused. “No, it had antlers.”

The timer for the pizzas went off and the werewolf shoved the last of his hamburger into his mouth before getting up. Mabel finished off her tea when he sat down with a plate full of slices. She stole a cheese one and raised one eyebrow, daring him to make a comment.

Dipper, wisely, kept his mouth shut. At least about that. “Do you think that Great Uncle Ford would have books on it?”

“I don’t see why not,” she muttered around a mouthful of cheese. “You could always go down and ask him.”

“I, uh,” the werewolf hesitated. “I don’t know how to get to the basement.”

Staring at him for a few long moments the witch seemed to be running that through her head before realization set in. “Oh, right! No worries, I’ll show you after you finish.”

Dipper ate a bit faster, finishing the first pizza in record timing and easily starting on the second. An entire lower part of the shack must have been hidden by magic or some other type of sorcery. How else would it had been kept secret for so long?

Turns out, it wasn’t magic at all.

It was a vending machine.

Done eating and a bit disappointed, Dipper looked over the metal box, moving it back and forth with a scowl. “That’s it?” He said.

“What were you expecting?” Mabel stood further back in the gift shop, her arms crossed over her chest, hip slightly jutted to the side. “Grunkle Stan is the one that put it in, and magic would just attract unwanted attention.”

Grumbling, Dipper started down the stairs and his sister followed behind, shutting the makeshift door behind her. The elevator was a bit of a surprise, plus the typed in codes that were needed, but they reached the third subfloor (the basement had _three floors_ ) and walked out into a room that looked more science fiction than science fact. There was old machines mixed with new, blinking red lights and small screens spitting out readings.

Mabel led him past all of it to a curtained off area, knocked on one of the machines, and pulled the fabric to the side. “Grunkle Ford?”

“Over here!” He was in a more secluded corner, working on soldering something. Thick, black goggles covered the top of his face and, when he lifted them up, they could see that his hands were protected by a pair of thick but custom made gloves. “Mabel, Dipper, what can I do for you?”

“We were wondering if we could borrow your collection of mythology books,” the witch carefully stayed close to the curtain, not wanting to walk further into the room—who knew what was lurking inside it? “The library is closed and I figured we can go through the books and the internet at the same time.”

“Go ahead!” He said, lowering the goggles back over his eyes. “You knew where they all are, help yourself.”

Mabel turned and dodged around Dipper, vanishing through the curtain before either teenager or adult could stop her. “Thanks, Great Uncle Ford!” She called back.

Before really realizing what was going on, the werewolf found himself back in the elevator heading up to the second floor. There was a door with a keyhole, but Mabel just pushed it open, ducking under a pterodactyl skeleton and heading to a large, leather chest with runes carved along the sides. “Come _on_ , Dipper,” she grabbed one handle. “I don’t have all night!”

He grabbed the other side and was shocked, for a moment, with how heavy it was. “Geeze,” he murmured, readjusting his hand. The weight wasn’t much of a problem once he got over the fact that it felt like a lot more than just books were in the chest. “What do you keep in here?”

“Just a couple of books,” Mabel said, shrugging. “You should have seen what was in it when Grunkle Ford and I first found it.”

They dragged it up to the attic, placed it in the small alcove Mabel had made into a small art studio, pulled out a table, some chairs, and her sticker covered laptop before settling down. As the computer booted up, the witch laid Carnwennan back on the table and dug around through her drawers for some colourful string. Embroidery floss or something like that.

Dipper opened the chest.

There was a staircase leading down into the dark.

“A _couple_ of books?” He looked up at his sister and reached out automatically to grab the glowing orb she tossed at him.

“Couple of books, a library, what’s the difference?” Mabel motioned him onward. “There was a lot more than just books inside when we first found it.”

Dipper opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head, and headed down into the dark. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she meant a _library_ , the werewolf realized. There were shelves upon shelves seemingly stretching on forever with the way they vanished into the dark. He couldn’t imagine anything else fitting in here.

The shelves, luckily, were labelled and he didn’t have to go far before getting to a section about mythological creatures. Grabbing a couple, he headed back up to where Mabel was typing on her laptop, tongue sticking out from the corner of her mouth. The witch managed to multi-task, braiding string around Carnwennan as Dipper flipped through books, trying to find some image of the beast they had seen in his memory.

Creatures that looked human was a no-go—the thing definitely had lost all traces of humanity. But, if the vampires were to be believed, there must have been _something_ humanoid left of it. Perhaps it came from a human, perhaps it was a human body twisted by a demon.

All searches came up blank.

The hours passed. Mabel finished her bracelet, but they found no answers.

Sometime after midnight, the glowing orb they had been using for light flickered and died.

“Mabel?” The werewolf blinked his way to night vision and turned to his sister. Her face was illuminated by the pale glow of the computer screen, head resting on her arms, eyes gently closed. Carnwennan pressed uncomfortably into her cheek as she slept, but the witch hardly noticed it.

Dipper’s eyes softened and he got up, going to her side of the table, and carefully lifted her up into his arms. “Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s get you to bed.”

They didn’t have far to go and he set her down on the mattress, removing her shoes and socks. Before he shut her computer, the werewolf caught sight of the anchor charm, twinkling in the pale illumination. He picked it up by the string it was attached to, glancing over the onyx embedded along the front.

“I don’t know where you’re from or how you got here,” Dipper told it. “But I’m glad that you were looking out for her.”

No words were spoken—jewellery can’t speak after all, but the werewolf still got the sense that the old artefact was happy to have looked after her and would continue to do so. He set it down on her bedside table and changed into something more comfortable before climbing onto his own mattress to get some sleep.

oOo

Dipper woke up with a jerk and blinked blearily, rubbing at his eyes with a groan. There was a scratching sound and he looked over the side of the bed. Carnwennan was on the floor, slowly inching across the boards like someone had tied a fishing line to it and was tempting some fish with a nice meal.

For a long moment, the werewolf just stared at it, glanced at the clock (which boasted two in the morning), and then looked over at Mabel’s bed.

It was empty.

Sitting up, Dipper frowned. The scratching returned and he stood up, scooping Carnwennan up and padding towards the door. “Mabel?”

The shack was silent. Dipper headed down the stairs, sticking his head into the living room and kitchen before catching sight of movement outside. Wide open, the gift shop door seemed to beckon to the outside and the werewolf shut it behind him, eyes on the figure standing in front of the trees.

“Mabel?”

His sister didn’t answer him and he walked across the parking lot, dirt and rocks digging into the bottom of his feet. Dipper came to stand beside her. “Let’s go back inside,” he said and the witch took a step forward.

She was barefoot, he realized and, when he moved in front of her, the normally brown eyes were a now familiar violet. Mabel didn’t look at him, not completely. It was like her gaze was drawn past to something he couldn’t see.

“Mabel,” Dipper said and she walked past him. “Let’s go inside—ah!”

Carnwennan jerked, pulling the werewolf after the witch and, rubbing at his shoulder, Dipper grumbled and complied. Magic was settling around them. Heavy, thick magic. The stars above seemed too bright and he could make out the Milky Way stretching like a road through the constellations. In the woods, the colours burned. What was once pine green seemed to be brighter, violets, blues, yellows, and reds like dimming neon signs, and, as Mabel walked, white flowers sprouted at her heels, blooming in seconds as if they were tiny drops of starlight.

Magic, someone had told him once, was its own force. It couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t stop it from having a mind. The truly powerful listened to magic, rather than forcing it to bend to their will. Perhaps... perhaps that’s what this was?

There seemed to be nothing but the softest of moss beneath their feet as they walked and a breeze came up from the path, swirling around Mabel as she never broke her stride. The witch’s long hair flowed as if it was underwater before settling again, but nothing else around them moved—it hadn’t even touched the werewolf.

Leaves rustled above and Dipper looked up. Large, green eyes stared at him from between the needles of a pine tree and vanished. They didn’t seem malicious merely... curious. Like a child. The werewolf sniffed at the air, but there was just Mabel, him, and the forest.

His sister continued to walk, never breaking her stride; neither slowing nor gathering speed as they walked until the woods opened, bushes seemingly parting, and they stood in a clearing. Here is where the stars seemed the brightest, where the earth seemed drenched in bioluminescence.

Mabel stopped then and Dipper glanced over her shoulder to see where her magic had led them.

There was a half circle of trees surrounding an opening to a cliff side that should have never existed. Moss covered the ground, surrounded by large buffalo grass and low hanging tree branches.

Sitting in the middle, fur spun of fine gold, eyes painted the shade of a fawns coat, was a coyote. It was the same animal they had seen earlier, though Dipper could not say how he knew that, only that he did. Beside him, Mabel sat, crossing her legs and bracing her hands on her knees.

Dipper followed her, his eyes drawn to the flecks of silver light swirling in the trees.

It all seemed too much like a dream to be real.

“You are not dreaming, Dipper Pines,” said the coyote.

Mabel woke up from her trance with a gasp, her back straightening, though the magic didn’t leave her. Rather, it seemed to strengthen, forming armour across her body as a living shield.

“Where are we, then?” He said, moving closer to his sister as she teetered slightly to the side.

The coyote smiled in the way only dogs could. “A world between worlds,” he said. “My realm, if you will.” Getting up, he shook out his fur and walked around the tree line, but didn’t approach them.

Mabel blinked a few times and frowned. “Who are you?” She rubbed the violet out of her eyes. “Why did you call me here?”

“I wasn’t quite sure it would work, to be honest,” the canine said. If he had been human, Dipper was sure he would have shrugged. “But you have a connection to the land, to the water and the air. A similar connection to myself, if I do say so.” And, then, he seemed to become more without ever changing, like the world around them had shifted and turned. “And I am Coyote,” he pronounced it with the Spanish inclination—three syllables rather than two.

The title, the name, was capitalized as if it took on everything that a coyote was, is, and could be.

“Coyote,” Mabel breathed as if unable to say anything louder in such a quiet place. Above them, the trees rattled and a breeze ruffled their hair.

“Why do you keep following us?”

Those intelligent eyes turned to Dipper, but Coyote didn’t seem all too bothered by the question. “Because you’re interesting,” he said and tilted his head to the side and padded closer to them until his nose was almost pressed to the werewolf’s. “And you’re investigating something I have a personal investment in.”

Dipper tensed and Mabel rested a hand on his knee.

Coyote turned his attention to the witch. “ _You_ are the most interesting,” he said softly. “A witch born of four, yet made by accident.”

“Born of _four_?” Mabel shook her head. “I don’t know what that means.”

The canine merely smiled. “That’s alright,” he said. “It’s buried in your head somewhere, for now, though, I just need some bait.

And, without further ado, Coyote shoved her off the cliff.

**Author's Note:**

> I made this AU a while ago and finally go around to posting it up on this place. Enjoy!


End file.
